


Surviving The End of The World

by gertrudeabernathy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: All the sex right at the end, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Photographs, Slavery, Slow Build, Sweet, sequoias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 05:41:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gertrudeabernathy/pseuds/gertrudeabernathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The contract of one G. Stilinski (M)(17yrs) has been purchased - on a generous impulse - by Factor McCall, who now has to confess to the Alpha that her new purchase will not speak or eat. Will Alpha Derek be able to reach someone who has lost his will to live? </p><p>Put yourself "up on the blocks" with a local reputable Contract Agent! Sell your labor on a long-term contract to one of the great werewolf estates - or get sold if something goes a bit wrong - and escape meaningless and insecure jobs, social indifference, the banality of modern life! Of course, you could end up more-or-less enslaved to someone very very nasty. Or not! maybe they will be just a bit retro and gloomy. Either way, once you're in, you're in.</p><p>NOW COMPLETE! (and with a NEW datestamp too!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Despair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exclamation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exclamation/gifts).



> My beloved Sheriff has died prior to the commencement of the story.

The Alpha’s Factor shifted nervously in her seat and cleared her throat.

“Is there anything else, McCall?” asked the Alpha, unused to hesitation or awkwardness from his dazzlingly-efficient head of operations.

“Well, my lord, I am ashamed to say I have to report a failure.”

“Spit it out then.”

“In the last intake, I think I made an error in bidding for one of the new servants. I mentioned him last week - he is the only one who - I think saying that he isn’t settling in well is something of an understatement. He - I am afraid he hasn’t come around to his new circumstances at all.” She wiped her brow and pushed back her curly hair. 

“Won’t he take to any work?”

“It’s worse than that, I’m afraid. Dr Deaton saw him yesterday, and he thinks he may die.”

“Die! Here? From what?”

“I can’t get him to speak, or eat, and we are only getting him to drink by holding a wet sponge to his mouth. He drinks because he can’t help it, and then he cries. For hours. It is really distressing to everyone. I am at my wits’ end. We can put in a feeding tube as a last resort, but he will try to pull it out. And if we knock him out - sometimes he wakes up and seems to remember where is, and then he - “

“What?”

“He wails, it’s awful.”

“How old is this kid?”

“He is seventeen. His name is Genim Stilinski.” 

“Why was he at market?”

“His father was killed recently, and his mother died ten years ago.”

“Stilinski - the Sheriff of Beacon Hills - this is his son? Why didn't I know the Sheriff died?”

“It was not even a month ago - when you were in Portland.”

The Alpha pushed back his chair and walked to the window. “That’s ridiculous! The boy is seventeen, and the Sheriff has lived there for years! Why wasn’t he bonded to finish paying the mortgage - if there even was one?”

“Leftover debt from when his mother was sick. It was borderline, but the bank decided on indenture.”

“So he was up on the blocks a week after the funeral!”

“Two days.”

“Why did you buy him?”

“Because Deucalion’s factor was standing next to me and he said -“

“What?”

McCall shuddered a little. “Something awful about how the boy was exactly to his master’s taste. Et cetera.”

“OK. Good call.”

“Anyway, I will keep you apprised.”

“Oh no.” The Alpha was halfway to the door already. “I am going to see him now.”

“Oh.”

“That’s not a problem, is it?” 

“God, no. No. I’m out of ideas. Please do come and try to speak to him. He’s in that little room over the stables.”

“Why isn’t he in the Main Hall?” he asked sharply.

“His distress - it’s really horrible to listen to, and I didn’t want the rest of the staff in tears as well.”

“All right. Let’s see him.”

\------

The boy - youth - man - whatever - didn’t move from his position curled on the bed facing the door as the Factor, then Derek climbed up and into his little room. He smelt of salt and a little old sweat, but the room wasn’t as bad as the Alpha had feared. The undertones of young Stilinski’s scent were rather pleasant, in fact. 

“You leave him by himself, then.” 

“I sit in here with him as often as I can.” Derek noticed a little desk and lamp with ledgers and a laptop in the corner of the room. “But frankly, he isn’t going anywhere.”

The Alpha called down the stairs to the stablehand below. “Sims - can you go to the kitchens for me, and bring me some bread and milk, and some baked apple or something soft and sweet and not too hot please?”

Then he dragged a chair close to the bed and said softly, “Mr Stilinski? I am going to move your hands. I know you aren’t asleep but you don’t have to do anything.” He carefully moved the still hands away from the pale face. The little sponge was in a bowl of cold clear water on the stand beside the bed.

“Don’t be frightened, but I am going to put some water on your face and then maybe you will indulge me by drinking a little bit.” He wet the sponge and squeezed it onto the wood floor without a thought, then very gently wiped it over his servant’s brow and cheek. Then he held it sopping wet against his lips. Sure enough, the instinct was too strong and the dry mouth opened a little, and drank. Derek repeated the action ten times. Then any pretense of sleep was abandoned, and the boy turned his face into the pillow, hard.

“Thank you,” said Derek. “I hear your name is Genim. I knew your father a little.”

The boy’s eyes opened. 

“He was a good man - a gentle man with a sense of humour. I liked him.” Derek left a very long silence, until the boy closed his eyes again. 

“Will you let me give you a few more mouthfuls of water?” There was no response, but when Derek touched the corner of his mouth with one thumb, and put the wet sponge up to his mouth, he didn’t turn his head away, and let a little more liquid trickle in.

McCall was surprised, but signed quickly to the Alpha that she was leaving the room, and went quietly down the ladder. 

“I am very sorry to hear about the circumstances that brought you here. You were unlucky, I think in not being allowed to take over the mortgage on your family home.”

No response.

“I think you must have formed a very unpleasant - and false - impression of what indentured servitude might be, but I assure you that you are safe.”

No response.

“I will speak to McCall and will confirm what I think is her judgment - that you are very ill and might need some time to recover your strength before any regular position can be found for you on the estate.”

Just then Sims' head stuck up into the room from the ladder. He had the tray from the kitchen balanced in one arm. Derek took it and set it on the floor next to the bed.

“I hope you will eat a mouthful of something for me, Genim, as we are worried about you.”

Without opening his eyes, the boy turned his face into the pillow and groaned something incomprehensible, even to werewolf ears.

“I am sorry - what did you say?” 

“I want to be dead.”

“Oh,” said Derek, surprised by the intensity of his own reaction. He was so evidently sincere. It was a horrible thing to hear.

“Why don’t I just die?” 

“Because - “ and Derek took one of the still hands between his own - “Because your instinct forces you to take the water, and because although you are so sad that you feel like you have a broken heart - your body is young and too strong, and it won’t let you go, Genim. It will be too terrible for us to watch you die, because it will take so long. So don’t die just yet. Eat a mouthful of something for me and I’ll come back later and see if you can take another mouthful. And maybe you can get well enough to think about what else you might do, if you can’t die. And by the way, we won’t let you starve yourself. If I order her to, McCall will feed you through a tube in your nose and you won’t be able to stop us.”

A low wail of genuine despair rose from the bed.

“And - we really, really don’t want to have to do that. It will be horrible - even violent if you have any strength left to resist us - and it will break McCall’s heart to hurt you and force you. But at least until you are well, you are my responsibility, and I am telling you that I will do anything I have to, to prevent your suicide, and everything I can to help you get well enough to think for yourself, Genim.”

“Stop calling me that.” 

“Tell me what I should call you.”

“Stiles. Everyone called me Stiles.” He opened his eyes again. They were brown, but light, with whiskey colors.

“Stiles. Good. Now open your mouth a little more.” Derek spooned in a little apple sauce, then another spoonful. He could see Stiles’ throat swallowing. “A little piece of bread soaked in milk now. You don’t have to chew. It’s soft enough.” He introduced a torn-off piece and Stiles swallowed it. He coughed a little and Derek put the food to one side, up on McCall’s table. He sat back down.

Having eaten, Stiles was realizing that his plan had fallen apart. Fresh tears slid down his face. 

“You are right to cry, probably,” said Derek. “It’s very hard going, resolving to keep living. I know something about it, actually, but we can talk later." And he took Stiles’ hand again, and held it till the exhausted boy fell asleep.

When Derek reached the foot of the ladder, McCall was waiting at the bottom, trying to look calm, rather than amazed.

“My Lord!”

“Yes?”

“You talked so much to him - you never talk like that. And it worked - how did you do it?”

“He did it. Keep trying him with the food. Get Scott onto it. And call him ‘Stiles’, please.”

“Yes, my lord Alpha.”

“I am glad you bought his contract. Thanks.” And he bolted, back towards the house.

  



	2. One Foot In Front Of The Other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek investigates, and finds there is unfortunately no mystery to investigate; Scotty shows him something cute.

The next time the Alpha was in town, when he had finished up his estate business, he took the opportunity to call in at the Sheriff’s department.

The most senior of the deputies - recently elevated to the big desk - was out. As Derek was speaking to the receptionist, Chris Argent walked into the lobby. He stopped short, and dropped his eyes courteously before speaking. 

“Alpha Hale - good morning. Can the Special Desk help you with anything?”

Derek fought down the old discomfort that kicked in when he saw any of the remaining Argents, and nodded to Chris. “I don’t know yet. I was coming in to ask about John Stilinski. I only found out this week.”

“My god, yes - what a thing to happen!”

“What did happen?”

“The stupidest thing - it was a dirt-ordinary traffic stop for a broken tail-light - and an idiot paranoid meth head stabbed him. It took poor John a few minutes to die, lying there in the road - he was dead when the ambulance got there. He was talking to dispatch about Stiles the whole time. We had to send the clerk on leave for a fortnight - she was shattered.”

“I am partly here because of Stiles.”

“I heard. Is he - “Chris shook his head. “He didn’t take it well.”

Derek glared at the wall, trying to think of what he could say. Nothing came to mind. ‘We think he has stopped trying to starve himself to death’ seemed to be more information than he was willing to share. So he changed the subject.

“The recording must have been difficult for him to hear - from your dispatcher, I mean.”

It turned out that there had been a major screw-up. The senior deputy had taken with him a younger officer when he went to break the news to Stiles. In his first shock, Stiles had seemed relatively composed, and had asked them if his father's death was at least quick and painless - and the young man, in a poorly-thought-through attempt at compassion, had told him it was instantaneous. His senior, horrified, had not been able to take away the single moment of comfort in the interview. The Sheriff’s death hadn’t apparently served any grander purpose - the meth head had crashed into a tree ten minutes down the road anyway, and was currently awaiting trial - and there was really nothing else to say, except to praise John Stilinski in the fulsomest terms possible - which was embarrassingly unnecessary, as Stiles had clung pretty close to his Dad, who was his only known relative. 

And of course, there had been no opportunity to set the record straight with Stiles, because after the first few minutes, he had gradually lost his struggle to keep it together, and had become desperate and then incoherent. He had been lovingly frog-marched through the funeral by the department staff and a few friends - apparently Argent’s daughter Allison had gone to the event to support him - but had been assessed by the bank officers as unsuitable to take over his father’s loan the day after the funeral. Chris was troubled by the possibility that at the interview, Stiles was still adversely affected by the heavy doses of sedative the doctor had given him after the interment. 

“Who was the bank officer?” asked Derek.

“The manager, Harris, came himself. We sent someone along to witness, but Stiles was completely beside himself by the time the interview was over. I suspect Harris thought the alternatives were indenture - with work to do, and a new scene, and new people - or hospitalization. I actually think he was trying to do him a favour.”

“I doubt Stiles saw it that way.”

“It’s only seven years. He will be a young man still.”

Derek felt a tide of rage rise in his chest. ONLY seven years! He wondered how Argent would react if he offered to purchase a seven-year contract on his daughter, or if one of the other Alphas in California gained custody of her between the ages of 17 and 25. Of course, it was impossible to be reviling the system of indentured servitude to the greater werewolf families to an Argent. The Hale farm did well on the neo-feudal estate model - it made for stability and security at home. Derek knew his servants had at least reasonable lives - better than what they might have enjoyed as 'employees' at Walmart or McDonalds, or as mortgage owners back in ’08 and ‘09. But he couldn’t think of anything he could say calmly aloud, so he held his tongue.

“You know Stiles’ personal effects - family photos, and his computer and that sort of thing - were put into storage when he went with the agents - your Factor should have the details.”

“Yes,” said Derek, and stopped short.

“Alpha Hale - would you take Stiles the copy of the recording? A few of us were listening on our way to the scene - and I think it - I can’t say it would make him happy, but…”

“He should have it.” Yes. Horror roiled through Derek’s blood. How on earth would he start that conversation?

“You should listen to it yourself first so you know what he is dealing with. And don’t let him be on his own when he listens to it.”

Again Derek had to choke down rage. How stupid or careless did Argent think he was? He thought perhaps his eyes had flashed red involuntarily, because Argent flinched back. There was a tense silence, which Derek broke.

“Deucalion’s Factor bid for him too. Things could be worse.”

Now it was Argent’s turn to stare at the wall. There was guilt all over him. “Yes, of course. You see - Allison knows Stiles, but they weren’t particularly close - he was pretty tight with her friend Lydia, but she's been away in France for a few months on some exchange - and Allison has lost her mother - I didn’t think it would be appropriate…”

Derek shook himself. “Of course not. He will be fine with us, anyway. It’s not a fate worse than death.”

The word lingered in the air for a moment, until Argent excused himself and left to contact the senior deputy and retrieve the recording. While he was gone, Derek sat on the visitors’ lounge and tried not to think about whether he had lied or not. The last time he had seen Stiles, he had been walking back along the pond path leaning on Scott’s arm. He had pink cheeks, but had been visibly trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other, almost exhausted by their stroll. He seemed better - but Derek had no idea whether his improvement would continue, or slow, or reverse itself.

“Here we are,” said Chris briskly, coming out with a DVD case with ‘for Stiles’ written on it. “I couldn’t find a CD case.”

He handed it to Derek. It felt like taking possession of a bomb with a lit fuse. 

“Look after him.”

“We’ll try.”

“He’s such a funny kid… well - he is nearly an adult, really. I guess he isn’t himself yet though.”

“Funny?”

“Well - “ Argent looked anxious. “He was the poster child for Adderall - and he’s a joker - he never used to shut up - but I guess you won’t have seen that side of him yet. He’s smart, anyway.”

“OK,” said Derek, making a note to ask someone who knew whether Stiles should still be on whatever Adderall was - something for ADD assumedly - and leaving the rest of that information to settle for a while. He suddenly had to get out of there. “Thanks, Chris.”

Chris had the good grace to look ashamed. “I’m not sure you should be thanking me. Tell me: do your people get visitors?”

“If they want them.”

“I was thinking - Stiles might like to see Allison.”

“If your girl and Stiles want to catch up, get her to ring McCall. She’ll set something up.” And Derek was getting irritated again. Was Stiles sweet on this bloody Argent girl? God, that would be a pain to deal with - the youngest of their rotten clan, born and raised in suspicion and hate - by her evil old grandfather anyway - probably a smiling menace to every wolf in the pack - skipping in with her basket to pat Stiles’ head and hold his hand. Fuck. “Not my department. Thanks.” And without further chitchat he turned and walked out, and climbed into the big black farm SUV - which might have looked vaguely cool except for every kind of carrying rack possible stuck to its roof and tailgate. He checked that no-one was looking, then rested his head on the steering wheel cover for a moment. All this time, years and years gone by; and he had no real reason to distrust Chris Argent, who as far as he knew had behaved honorably enough; and yet. And yet. His mouth tasted bitter and his heart was pounding. It took him a few minutes to cool down enough to be confident to drive. He was very glad he hadn’t shaken hands with the man. He would have had to stop at the first public bathroom to wash the scent off his hand. 

When he got home the shadows were lengthening and it was starting to cool down a little. He pulled up into the courtyard and stepped down, to see Scott crossing the paving stones with a blanket and a pillow bundled under his arm. 

“Hey,” said Scott, grinning lopsidedly. “Come see something cute.”

Derek followed him, curious. Scott walked way out to the big barn where they kept a medium-sized but productive dairy herd. Unlike horses - who usually had to be carefully picked and trained to accept a werewolf rider - cows didn’t seem to care who milked them, as long as they followed procedure and were punctual. Scott picked his way in soundlessly and Derek followed suit. In the corner stall was a little calf that the staff had decided to bottle-raise as a pet, and a tiered stack of hay bales. On the waist-high tier, Stiles lay fast asleep, the empty bottle still in his hand, with the calf asleep on the floor beside him.

Derek was riveted. The pale skin of Stiles’ forearm and of his face and throat seemed almost to glow in the darkening barn. And he was big - Derek hadn't realized how tall he was. He was still thin, but his back looked broad. His face was calm in sleep. His long-fingered hands were a little dry, and rough. 

Scott carefully tucked the blanket around him, and lifted his head, murmuring softly, “No need to wake up, buddy, stay asleep, you’re all right,” as he slipped the pillow under his face. Stiles made a little noise but slipped back under immediately, relaxing. Then Scott comically tiptoed backwards out of the stall, grinning at Derek - until he almost kicked an empty metal pail onto the concrete floor. Derek had Scott’s weight braced by his right arm and the pail in his left hand so quickly that even Scott was startled. “Shhh, idiot,” whispered the Alpha, and put the bucket down soundlessly. “Don’t wake him up now.”

They both turned and looked. Stiles sighed in his sleep. Derek was conscious of the lovely smells of the barn, milk and sleep and salt and straw, and underneath it, something like cinnamon or cantaloupe or… it was Stiles’ scent, remembered from the upstairs room.

As they reached the top of the courtyard, Derek looked back. “Are you going to check on him, Scott? Don't let him wake up in a strange place in the dark.”

Scott looked indignant. “I am just getting some apples or a sandwich or something cos I am starving. I’ll go back out there and keep an ear out, and help him up the ladder when he wakes up. He’ll be okay. Hey - they looked pretty cute, didn’t they?” he asked, beaming.

Jesus Fucking Christ, thought Derek. What I am going to do? Why do I want to shove my nose up against that white neck and keep drinking in his scent for hours? What am I doing with the responsibility for this half-mad kid - youth - man - whatever - who probably needs some sort of psych drugs to operate properly - and with this recording in my jacket pocket which will kill him to hear, which will tear open his every wound so it’s as bad as the first day… but which can’t be hidden? Can I bear to listen to it? Do I even have the right to hear it before he does? There is no one to talk to, no one I can trust enough to talk to them about all of this! 

And for the hundredth time that week he missed his big sister. Laura would have known what to do. He really needed Laura. 

Scott was staring at him, baffled and then worried.

“Hey Derek, are you OK? Your heart is going like crazy!”

Well spotted, Scotty-boy, thought Derek, grabbing him round the neck and rubbing his head with his fist, while the boy laughed, and yelped, and half-heartedly struggled to escape this sudden display of affection and to see the Alpha’s face. 

At least now I’m not the only one who is hopelessly confused, thought Derek, walking up to his front door with a big grin spreading across his face, despite everything. He felt kind of sick, and kind of panicky, and kind of great.

  



	3. Pictures of Wolves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melissa shows Derek some photos; Derek shows the lads the countryside; Stiles shows that he is a good driver but a crazy person; Scott shows that he is paying attention; another pack shows Stiles their good sides; Stiles shows his hand.

“I think you should take Stiles with you this trip,” said McCall, gathering the photos up and slipping them back in the envelope. “And take these. I don’t know anything about photography but they put the estate in a good light.”

Derek frowned at her. “I almost wish I had said yes about the digital camera thing. Then we could have sent them to Cora to see what she thought of them.”

McCall smiled in a complicated way. Derek hesitated but couldn’t resist. “What?”

“She won’t stay away for ever, my lord.”

Derek laughed shortly. “When your son writes a report, it’s a list of facts thirty words long, and half of them are misspelled, but when I take him along to a conference, he remembers the look on everyone’s face in every presentation. He gets that from you.”

“Alpha, he has gotten a great deal from you as well.” She hesitated. “And if you think it makes you a sentimental fool to want your sister to come home, I disagree.”

“It makes me a fool to think that a picture of Margaret Mangan milking Black Trudie is going to make Cora leave New York, no matter what the light is like,” he said, holding onto the last photo.

“The training ones would make anyone want to come here. He has a wonderful eye. And these are only his third batch using the darkroom. It has been interesting to watch him work a project.”

“He is posted to the big kitchen, though?”

“Yes, and Cook says he is very diligent and has a flair for the work.”

“Apart from his tendency to go to sleep on the job!” One night Derek had gone down to the kitchens after dinner to praise a new dish, only to find the kitchen staff tiptoeing and whispering as they loaded the dishwashers. Stiles was fast asleep, his head on his arms on the table. “We hate to wake him when he looks peaceful,” said Cook apologetically. Half the estate had a new pet, apparently.

“Why don’t I take Stiles, and Scotty too?” asked Derek. “Then they won’t be bored.”

“I admire the way he is ‘my son’ when he is attempting to write a report, and ‘Scotty’ when he is your Beta.”

She almost wished she hadn’t said it, when her mild joke brought a shadow over the Alpha’s face. She knew he was wishing that it could have been Laura or him that had given Scott the bite, rather than his mad uncle, who had been Alpha back in the terrible period that had struck at Derek’s peace of mind for the second time. McCall had brought her poor, gasping, stick-thin young son to live on the Hale Estate when it was under Laura’s management, and had indentured herself for her first term of fourteen years. It was with Laura Hale that she had negotiated to have Scott turned at the safest possible age - eleven or twelve. But Laura's death had derailed the plan, and then Peter had decided to turn all the candidates at once to strengthen his hold and grow his pack - on paper anyway. So the turning had been abrupt and swift - and one other estate child had failed to take the change and had died, to Scott’s terror and distress. Derek had inherited Scott as his Beta when he had taken on his uncle and killed him in revenge for Laura’s vicious murder - but he had never felt perfectly satisfied that McCall had gotten exactly what she had paid for. 

She watched the Alpha’s face - thinking as she always did, with an almost maternal pang, how nice-looking he was - as he visibly sank back into memory.

“So you will take them both down to Springville then? Are you sure they won’t annoy you?”

“They don’t annoy me.” He rubbed his face. “Argent told me that before the - before, Stiles was a joker who never shut up.”

“He will recover. He is doing well already. People get better from things.”

“Come on, Melissa - it is exactly as true to say, people never get over what happens to them.”

She couldn’t argue with him, because for him, so far, that was true. When Scott’s father had left her, sick of the incessant coughing in the night and his pretty wife snapping in exhaustion when she came home from night shifts at the hospital to find dinner’s dishes still in the sink, she had thought she would never get over her misery and shame. She had cried and wailed because she felt so alone - and now when she looked back, she was amazed to think that she had ever wanted that tall, handsome, ambitious, useless idiot in their lives. Scott’s father couldn’t be trusted to give Scott his medication on time, and had been frustrated because the asthma made sports difficult. He had seemed to miss completely the sweet, perceptive, adoring boy that she prized. The worst thing that ever happened to her was, in the end, a great boon, a gift from the universe, clearing away an unloving obstacle to her happiness and Scotty’s.

The same could not be said for Derek’s history. She thought perhaps the loss of his big sister and Alpha had hurt him even more brutally than the fire in the hunting lodge all those years ago, that had taken his mother and father and brothers. His second great loss had been a blow from which he might always stagger. 

Stiles Stilinski had been brought to the right place at the right time, she thought.

______

Derek checked over the boys’ gear. Stiles noted that Derek saw the camera bag, and approved of it.

“Have either of you been to Sequoia National Park?”

They shook their heads, excited. 

“I thought we might stop there on the way back. Ansell Adams here can take a picture of a big tree.” The two of them were a study. Scott had no idea what Derek was talking about, but was delighted that his Alpha was acknowledging his new friend. Stiles looked away, smiling, obviously quelling an impulse to tell Derek he was being ridiculous.

Because they were taking so much produce down to the Springville Estate - the Bridge wolves used the name of their satellite town - they took the SUV instead of the Camaro. Derek knew that the back seat of Laura’s beast would be uncomfortable for Scott and torture for Stiles, who was maybe taller than he was himself. And he wasn’t averse to letting the boys take some of the driving to keep them in practice. Preparations for departure had involved a late night and a bit of bustle - so Derek was happy enough, after they had stopped for a break after the first few hours, when Scott persuaded Stiles to drive. Derek dozed in the back with the window cracked open, only half-attending to the quiet and sporadic conversation in the front. 

He woke up fast when there was a jolt on the brakes. He heard Scott saying, “You can pull over here, Stiles, it’s okay.” He watched without comment as Stiles signaled and checked his mirrors and braked smoothly enough as he stopped on the paved shoulder, and put on the handbrake, and turned off the engine. Then he struggled with his belt for a moment and flung himself out of the car and started walking away from them along the edge of the ditch.

Derek looked interrogatively at Scott. “Back there we passed a cop giving a car a speeding ticket. A traffic stop.”

Stiles had stopped walking when he was a hundred yards up the road from them, and was apparently surveying the dry-looking field beside the road. 

They got out and waited anxiously by the car. Scott got a cold bottle of water out of the cooler in the trunk, and turned it nervously around in his hands, wiping off the condensation. After a few minutes, Stiles turned and walked back towards them. His face was grim. He handed the keys, still clenched in his hand, to Scott. He accepted the water and drank.

“Sorry,” he said shortly. 

“No problem,” said Scott and Derek in chorus.

“No more driving for me for a while.”

“I got it,” said Scott, and went around to the driver’s side.

“Can I do anything?” asked Derek tentatively.

Stiles glared at him in fury. “Like what? What exactly do you think you might be able to do?” He heard his own voice and realized who he was talking to - but before he could speak, Derek put out his hand and gripped his arm.

“Don’t you dare apologize to me, Stiles. Don’t you dare. I’d rather you hit me.”

Stiles’ face was white and clenched.

“You must be so angry - so angry at your father -" Stiles’ body jerked - “and at the other deputies - and at that guy - “ - and now Stiles was shaking. “You have every right to be angry.”

After a long moment, Stiles breathed in to speak. “I thought maybe I was getting better.”

“You are.”

“I feel completely mad, Alpha. I could - “ he looked around wildly - “I could - I could bite pieces out of the car seats, I could go into the field and start tearing out every - “ he broke off. “I want to break my own arm with the tire iron. I want to put my head through that window.”

“Don’t do that,” said Derek. “Automotive glazing is a total racket.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Scott staring at him in astonishment. 

Stiles took a half-step forward, then stepped back. “A seven-year bond ought to cover a side window.”

“On a Hyundai, maybe.”

Scott wasn’t sure who moved first, but suddenly Stiles was in Derek’s arms, gasping against his collarbone, saying over and over - to someone - “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and Derek had his arm around him and one hand on the back of Stiles’ head, bracing him, holding him close. Stiles’ arms were around Derek’s back too, clinging hard.

After a minute, they broke apart and Derek pushed Stiles into the back seat, and climbed in on the passenger side. “Okay, Scott,” said Derek, “hit it.”

After a few minutes, Scott checked on Stiles in the mirror. He was sprawled out, asleep.

“How does he do that so quick?” asked Scott, mystified. 

“He does it by lying awake at night,” said Derek. “The inside of his head is a tiring place to be.”

“He was on ADHD pills before.”

“I know. Doc said maybe to wait a while before he goes back on it - if he wants to at all.”

_____

It was beautiful at Springville, not as green as Beacon Hills but warmer. They had olive trees. The Bridges were an old family pack, whose estate had been a source of ideas to Laura in her first bewildering year as Alpha. They too had resisted any modernization for its own sake, or for the sake of bigger commercial yields. They went with what they thought would make their farm beautiful, sustainable, and rational to run. There were some estates that ran onsite cooperages and chandlers - but there was no need to be anachronistic for its own sake, as Silas Bridge explained, as he walked Derek and his two attendants around the home buildings.

“You still milk by hand up at Hale, do you?” he asked. Derek nodded. “We do too. Gets those lazy girls of mine out of bed in the mornings and it means you stay right on top of any problems with the herd. And it’s good for ‘em. Keeps ‘em tame.”

“The girls or the cows?” murmured Stiles from thirty feet behind them, to Scott, forgetting about werewolf ears. 

Silas laughed, fortunately. “Both, boy, both!” He peered sideways at Derek, who was trying to give Stiles a quelling glare and failing. “I see you are very fond of your servant there, Hale. Is he a new acquisition? I didn’t even know that you were gay. Not that I give a damn, of course.”

And now Derek was hideously embarrassed. He actually blushed, and was so surprised at the feeling that he put his hand up to his face, which made it worse. “Now now, son, don’t mind an old man’s bluntness,” said Silas, apologetic. “And the young fellers won’t mind me. Never thought of anything else at their age, except who was doing what to whom.”

Derek couldn’t look at any of them. He certainly wasn’t going to say ‘I am probably bisexual but I am too afraid and fucked up to attempt actual relationships, so although I dream about Stiles over there and jerk off to the idea of his dry hands on me, I have decided to behave exactly like a prissy human employer and never express my desire and just hope that it goes away, because I also cravenly want him to like me and approve of me.’ Silas would be tempted to open his throat then and there, probably. He was the most pathetic excuse for an Alpha werewolf possible. He flinched when Scott was suddenly by his side. His Beta bobbed his head to Silas. 

“Alpha, Stiles just lost his father, who was the Sheriff of Beacon Hills. My lord knew him a little. He was killed suddenly, in the line of duty, and that’s why Stiles came to us - his contract was put on the market by the bank. But he takes great photos - would you like him to take some of your farm?” 

“Of course! He can email them back to us. We can put ‘em on the website if they are any good.”

“Oh - they are the other kind - like paper ones, from a darkroom.”

“How nostalgic of you, Hale! Is it all right with you if the lads want to run along?”

“Yes,” said Derek. He still couldn’t look back at Stiles. He owed Scott a present. Possibly a pony.

_____

The huge dinner at Springville had been a lot of fun. In honor of the visit, the Bridge family had done their feast-day thing and had brought out refectory tables and set them in a long line for the whole estate at once. Even the Cook and her staff had places set for them at the very end; and as soon as the rest of the tables had been served their coffee and ice-cream, the foodies had come out to a general round of grateful applause and carried their own dinners down to the bottom of the table to tuck in. Stiles was obviously taking in the atmosphere of noisy order with great interest. When a gang of the younger servants and the few Springville children had taken over the cleanup, he had picked a few things up and gone with them, despite Scott trying to signal that he didn’t have to, as a guest. Silas’ wife Martha had noticed his willingness to help.

“Let him go with the others, Scott. They will look after your friend. I want you to show me these famous pictures.” The pack was heading to the porch, where citronella candles made a pretty line along the railing. One of the girls had snagged various bits of seconds, bread and cheese, the odd bit of chicken, and brought it out on a platter for everyone to pick at. Scott retrieved the envelope from their room and Martha had sat in her rocking chair, examining each one and passing them to Silas and the four Bridge daughters, and the two young male bitten wolves in their pack. 

“Look, Silas!” Martha poked at her husband with the photo. “Derek trains his pack himself! Is that karate you are doing there, Derek?”

“Tai-chi, Mrs Bridge. It’s good for balance. And it helps with control. We don’t need any confinement facilities at full moon anymore.” 

“Confinement!” huffed Silas. “When the humans see it’s full moon they ought to lock their doors and stay in and be good. It’s their problem if they are too stupid to take precautions.”

The girls rolled their eyes. “Dad, as if,” groaned the youngest. “Scott and Derek will think you are a total savage.”

“Who took these?” said Terry, one of the bitten wolves. 

“Stiles, the new bondservant you sat next to at dinner,” said Derek mildly.

“I think he is carrying a torch for you, Alpha. Look at these two!” and Terry held up two images, one of Derek glancing back over his shoulder at the pack who were following his movements, and one of him calmly correcting one of the men’s poses.

“Shut up, Terry,” said another one of the girls, winking at her sisters. “It can’t be that hard to get a good photo of Derek. He’s better looking than Ryan Gosling.”

“No he isn’t,” said the youngest. She grabbed one of the Tai-chi pictures back from Terry. “He has a better chest though.”

“Excuse our girls, Derek,” said Martha. “We would try to fob one of them off onto you, but you probably aren’t looking for a feral mate.” 

“We haven't said a word!” cried one of the two middle girls in mock-outrage. “Yeah, how am I feral?” said the other around a half-eaten drumstick, kicking Terry helpfully in the back of his head, and grinning at Scott, who grinned back.

“What’s the story with the boy, though?” asked Terry persistently, trying to smack his packmate’s leg behind him without putting down the photo he held. “Are you planning to give him the bite, Alpha?”

This time Derek was prepared. “He was only on the market because he has lost his father very recently. It’s too soon to expect him to make any decisions.” 

“He’s decided to join us, I see,” said Silas, causing them all to wriggle in their seats to look. Stiles was standing shyly at the screen door onto the porch.

“Come out here, Stiles,” called Derek, feeling a little conscious of saying his name.

“The others said I should come sit with you - I was going to help wash up, but they said I was a guest and they wouldn’t let me.”

“That’s an unexpected display of good manners from our lot,” said Silas, as Derek and Scott shifted down their bench to make room. “I’m surprised they didn't have you scrubbing old pots til midnight.” 

“These are very nice pictures,” said Martha. “You should do some portraits of the pack in the morning.”

“I could try now, if you sit very still, I think,” said Stiles, and he looked at Scott.

“I am going to get your camera bag. You sit.” Scott dashed away. Derek was aware of a slight ripple of surprise from the Bridge wolves, seeing a Beta apparently waiting hand and foot on a new servant. He felt he had to explain.

"Stiles was unwell when he arrived at the Estate.” He tried to look reassurance at Stiles, whose eyes were fixed on the wooden floor. “I'm afraid the transaction was not handled well by the bank - and the timing of the contract auction was - . Scott was looking out for him at first. He was exhausted. He is still recovering his strength.”

This time it was Martha who came to Stiles’ rescue. “How do you want us for the photos, young man?”

With a technical problem to solve, Stiles' focus was restored. He wouldn’t attempt a big group shot, but asked for each person to sit at the table with their gaze lowered or directed to one side, with a couple of candles to light each of them in turn. He changed the film in the camera when it arrived, and politely asked his Alpha to lift a big wooden chair down to the ground below, so that Stiles could stand on it and use the verandah rail for a tripod. The exposures were so slow that everyone could hear the two clicks of the shutter well apart. One of the girls got distracted and moved, but in his concentration, Stiles refused to repeat any exposures. As the last of the Springville pack was being immortalized, he was swaying a little on his perch on the chair-back. Derek hopped over the rail and reached up for the small of Stiles’ back to brace him, in case he lost his balance. At his touch, Stiles’ heart rate went through the roof.

“Thank you - my lord, but that isn’t going to - I need my hands steady.” He smiled ruefully.

Derek’s chest ached. Stiles liked him. He trembled at Derek’s touch. He wasn’t angry with him, or afraid of him. He liked him.

“It’s your turn next anyway,” said Scott, standing aside so that his Alpha could jump up onto the rail and step down via the bench. Derek took a huge breath, and struggled to find some expression he could hold for the long exposure. He tried for something neutral.

Then Scott sat, smiling to one side so his eyes wouldn’t flare. 

“What about the photographer?” asked Terry. “Shouldn’t he be included in the set?”

Scott and Derek lifted him over the rail, laughing and scrambling. He gathered all the candles and put them under his face, careless. “Just click it, please. It probably won’t come out.” He looked dubiously at all of them. “Maybe none of them will come out at all. I don’t really know what I am doing, honestly. I am making it up as I go along. I won’t know if they worked till I get home.”

Derek frowned at the boards of the porch, trying not to show how thrilled he was by that remark. 

As the rest of them turned in for the night, Silas pointed Derek to his room, then clapped him on the back. 

“I’m glad you came, Hale, quite apart from the farm stuff. I feel like I never really saw what you were like, before today - you are such a big hairy brute, and you’re always glaring at the floor or the horizon, or scaring the shit out of someone without any idea you are doing it - but I see how hard you are trying to do the right thing by all your people.”

Derek struggled for something to say, but couldn’t find it.

“If you’ll take a little advice - don’t be too reluctant to take anything back from them. Your people need to feel they can give something to their Alpha too.” 

Derek took a deep breath. “I’m going to go to bed before you start talking about Laura, and I start crying like a little girl.”

“Why would you cry like a little girl, Derek? I assume that when you cry, you do it like the Alpha you are, out of sheer terror that you will fuck up somehow and ruin everything.” Derek huffed a laugh. Silas turned to the stairs to his family’s rooms, and called back over his shoulder. “It gets easier, you know. Good night.”

“Good night,” said Derek, bracing himself.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All comments gratefully read! Non-US author seeks detailed concrit on her attempts to write in American - all those 'z's! "Like" if you want to hear about Stiles and Derek looking at Giant Redwoods! California is SOOO BIG and confusing! it is practically a country all by itself!


	4. Traditional Sleeping Arrangements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late at night at Springville Estate, Derek asks Stiles the big question.  
> (No, not that big question you crazy people! Derek only just found out Stiles liked him last episode!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanna write about trees, but I couldn't skip the awkwardity of the boys working out how to go to bed. Trees next time, I promise!

A very wide hallway split the part of the house where the guests’ quarters were. At each door, a rolled mat stood waiting, topped with a little photocell lantern - for packs where the Alphas preferred one of their Betas to lie on guard across the doorway outside their room. Derek looked for the yellow door that he had been directed to, and knocked and went straight in. 

It was a comfortable, traditional room with pale floorboards, and a big white bed with light, pulled-back curtains. The bed was a queen, but with what looked like either a short, narrow single bed, or a very wide padded bench with a sheet over it, set across its end. There was also a curiously built single bunk set up along the wall, to be rolled across the door. Stiles and Scott were sitting on that, in their shirts and shorts, with wet fringes and clean faces. Derek could smell that they had rushed to clean their teeth. 

“We didn’t get anything out of your bag,” said Scott. “We thought we’d just get out of your way in the bathroom.” 

“Neither of you wanted a shower?”

“We thought we’d better let you go first in case the hot water wasn’t too good.”

“Alright. Thanks. I will have a shower. I don’t want to smell of barn all night,” and he went straight to the extremely solid and well-fitted door of the room's ensuite. In the shower, he washed his hair and took his cock in his hand as he usually did, then stopped himself. What was he doing? Could Scott hear him through that door and over the extraction fan - and if so, would he be all right with Derek doing this - was it basic hygiene to him, too? Would he laugh - or worse, tell Stiles what their Alpha was up to? Derek decided to do what he always did, and let the imponderable opinions of other people go hang. He tried not to think about anything but the sensation of his hand and the water, and despite the fatigues of the day, he came fast and silently, and made sure to wash away every bit of evidence - enough to hide what he had been doing from Stiles, if not Scott. He cleaned his teeth and pulled on his pyjama pants, and felt ready to cope with bedtime.

Stiles went next, while Scott set himself up on the door-bed.

“It’s very traditional here, isn’t it?” said Scott. “I’ve never slept in one of these beds - where the rail bolts the door - but I’ve seen one at the Jenssen ranch.”

“When were you at the Jenssen’s?” asked Derek curiously.

“Oh, Laura took me and Mom with her on a visit. I am not sure why.”

“Your mother was learning Housekeeping back then, I think - Laura probably thought she should see as many traditional werewolf houses as possible, to know what our guests might expect.”

“There was a moose there. Or maybe I made that up.”

“In Wyoming? More likely to have been an elk, maybe. But it could have been. You were about eight?”

“Yes,” said Scott. “I was quite little, and we didn’t have a Beta with us. Mom took the pallet across the end, and Laura let me hop into the big bed with her, so I would be warm and not cough.”

“That was nice of her. I remember what you were like - little, but pointy. Everything on you was sharp and you wriggled all the time. No wonder your Mom wanted you to sleep in the Alpha’s bed.”

Stiles came out rubbing his head dry, in an ancient pair of flannelette sleep pants with sheep on them, and a clean white cotton vest. “No hot water issues so far, Scotty.”

Scott was in there fast, before that situation changed. 

Stiles started talking before his head was out of the towel. “Scott says the bit at the foot of the bed is for a human servant.”

Derek nodded. “The pallet, it’s called. This one looks a bit more comfortable than they usually are. But if it is too short for you, Stiles -“ and he lay down and pushed the quilt down to the end of the bed, just pulling a sheet over himself - “don’t feel constrained to try to sleep on it. You can sleep top to toe with me, or you can come up here. I’m tired. And even if I wasn’t, it wouldn’t be a problem. I want you to sleep if you can.”

Stiles nodded, but he lay down on the pallet. “I hope I am tired enough, too. If I wake anyone up - if I have a bad dream, I mean - I can go outside and sleep on that mat in the hall.”

“No,” said Derek, sitting up sharply. “Stiles, don’t do that. Promise me.”

“Would it be that bad?” 

Scott came glowing out of the bathroom in his boxers. “Would what be bad?”

“Stiles is worried about waking us up, but I have told him not to go outside the room.”

Scott looked serious. “Even here?”

“Even here,” said Derek. “It is the kind of thing that could be misconstrued even by someone well-meaning. These are good people, but although they seem pretty relaxed, they stick to tradition pretty carefully.”

“And a human outside their pack room is fair game? Is that a tradition?” asked Stiles. 

“It would look as though the human were in total disgrace,” said Scott. 

“The order of the table seating at dinner,” said Stiles thoughtfully, “ - was my position so close to the family a compliment to Derek’s perceived liberalism?”

“Well done, Stiles,” said Derek. “The order, apart from you, was in strict precedence of rank from top to bottom, except that Cook sat opposite Silas at the other end because of the kind of dinner it was. And they put you opposite that Frank guy, the other bitten wolf. What was the implication, Scott?”

“How do you mean? The implication of the seating order? Shouldn’t Stiles have been with their younger people down the end?”

Stiles moved uncomfortably. “Did that position imply that they were treating me as future pack, rather than as a human servant?”

“That’s how I read it,” said Derek.

“But - “ said Stiles, and stopped. He looked at Derek, then at Scott.

“What?” said Scott.

“I know - it would be a great compliment to be asked - and - I know no one has asked me - and they might never -“

“OK, how worried are you about this?” asked Derek.

“I don’t want to say the wrong thing here!” said Stiles plaintively, scanning their faces.

“Let’s get this over with,” said Derek, getting right out of bed. He padded over to Scott’s bunk. Scott sat up too. Now Stiles looked really alarmed.

“So: Stiles.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Derek muttered, rubbing his face.

“Alpha!” said Scott reproachfully.

“All right. You’re right, Scott, that’s fine. We may as well do the whole formal thing. Mr Stilinski.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Do you wish to ask for the gift of the bite, and a chance at either death, or greater life as a wolf member of the Hale pack?”

“I - “

“Yes or no, please.”

“No, my lord.”

“Good, fine, awesome,” said Derek, dragging his sheet-toga behind him as he went back to bed. “That’s that then. Now: any other business? Anyone else have drama to discuss?”

“No,” said boys quietly.

“Good! Everyone ready to attempt sleep?”

“Yes, Alpha,” came the little chorus.

Derek turned out the light. A minute later, Stiles spoke softly into the dark. “Thank you, Derek.”

“That’s OK. Go to sleep.” Derek felt himself starting to grin. “And by the way, I know your legs are hanging off that thing, so just in case this is what’s holding you back: if you hop in here, you don’t have to worry that you’ll wake up werewolf-married.” Derek could hear Scott trying to smother his laughter over by the door. 

“I wasn’t - !” Stiles did a little huff of vexation. “You two with your ‘don’t go outside or you’ll get eaten’ one minute, and the next minute, I’m an idiot!”

“I think you were an idiot before a minute ago, Stiles,” said Scott.

“Go to sleep, you jackasses!” growled Derek in his best Alpha-voice. There was a satisfactory muffled giggle, then the boys started to sigh and to compose themselves.

_____

Derek woke up to hear Scott calling quietly, “Wake up, buddy!” Stiles was whimpering and moving in his sleep. 

Derek slipped out of bed and crouched close to the pallet, whispering to Scott. “Shh- don’t do that, yet. Let’s just see if we can stop the nightmare without waking him first.” He put his hand on Stiles’ shoulder gently, but before he could say a word, Stiles screamed, and fell off the pallet as he woke, wild-eyed. Derek half-caught him so he didn’t hit the floor hard.

“It’s us, Stiles, it’s only Derek and Scott. You’re fine!” said Scott.

“You were dreaming,” said Derek, as Stiles stared in confusion. “We are at Springville, remember?” 

There was a knock on the door. “Was that someone having a bad dream?” said the voice of one of the girls. “I hope it wasn’t a rat or anything.”

“Just a nightmare, all good now,” called Scott hopefully.

“Fine, let us know if you need anything.” 

“Maybe just some cheese to pacify your giant rats,” he called back. There was a laugh, and soft steps moved away. 

Derek looked pointedly at Stiles’ long bony feet and ankles, sticking out of his sleep-pants.

Scott patted his hand, saying, “Hop in with Derek, Stiles, and get comfortable at least!”

“Come on,” said Derek, “wrap yourself up in your sheet and come up for a proper sleep, will you? You’re safe. It might stop the nightmare from coming back, if you have someone close by.”

Stiles nodded, and wearily shuffled up the side of the bed, a shapeless white bundle. Derek shifted over to make room and lay on his back, preparing for a long, unrestful wait while Stiles' heart slowed - but it was more like a collapse. Stiles was back under in a minute or two. He even rolled over and humphed and sprawled on his front, pressing one knee to the side of Derek’s thigh.

He smelled divine. It was the cinnamon note that Derek liked the best, though the slight fruit scent was lovely too, now that the distress-smell had faded. His clean sleep-breath was complex and endearing. Derek felt perfectly warm, and conscious of the whiteness and cleanness of the linen all around them. His body felt light, vibrant, like he might float up an inch or two and hover there. He wouldn’t have disturbed Stiles for anything. It was wonderful to feel his slow breaths and tiny movements. Everything about him spoke of trust and sweetness.

After a while, Derek heard Scott’s quiet snuffly snore and knew his Beta was asleep again. He closed his eyes, and rested. It wasn’t that he couldn’t sleep - it was that he couldn’t imagine voluntarily giving up a minute of feeling like this.

He must have slept, anyway, because when the first morning light woke him, he could feel that Stiles had shuffled even closer in the night, probably seeking extra warmth. He was pressed along Derek’s side, with his face under Derek’s arm. No need to bite him, thought the Alpha, he’s a little cub already, searching out scent. When Stiles woke up a few minutes later, he wriggled backwards and then smiled blearily down at Derek with one eye closed. Derek almost laughed aloud at his expression.

“I gotta pee,” croaked Stiles, half-conscious.

“Great,” said his Alpha. “Thanks for keeping me informed.”

“But that means I gotta get up!” he complained.

“That’s right, Stiles.” Derek couldn’t help but quirk an eyebrow. “You are not allowed to pee on me.”

“No no,” he said crossly, “I know,” and he half-fell off the edge, and shuffled off blindly.

“He’s not exactly a morning person, is he?” asked Derek of Scott, who was stirring.

“Whaaaaa?” said Scott, scratching his tummy and looking around, confused.

“I am surrounded by idiot teenagers,” said Derek, with obvious complacency. “How did this happen to an Alpha of my lineage and might?”

Stiles came out of the bathroom, yawning and trying to straighten himself up. “Hey - I slept right through, then? After - ?”

“Told you,” said Scott over his shoulder, limping for the bathroom now that Stiles was out. “It’s nice being in with your Alpha. It’s comfy.”

“Thank you, again, then, Alpha.” Stiles’ smile seemed to include more than his services as a werewolf slumber pillow.

“I live to serve,” said Derek, tactfully covering his slight morning wood.

“That is the motto of the Prince of Wales, you know. The heir to the English throne. ‘Ich dien’.”

“Then the Prince of Wales knows exactly how much work a bunch of pesky servants can be. Now - everyone get dressed! We are going to eat breakfast, then go look at some really big trees.”

“And Amy Adams here can do his thing!” crowed Scott, coming out of the bathroom and thumping Stiles on the back. 

Stiles and Derek looked at each other, puzzled for a second. “Yes, Scotty-boy,” said Stiles after a moment, “and then I will probably sing a Disney song too!”

“Great!” said Scott. “Let’s eat breakfast and go!”

  



	5. In the Giant Forest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles sees Scott and Derek shift; he greatly admires Derek's wolf; he gets upset because he never buys anything from a shop any more.

They drove up and up, with no music playing and the windows cracked open, despite the roar of the slipstream. The sky was brilliantly clear, and Derek could feel the excitement rolling off Scott as the landscape grew grander and starker. Stiles grew silent and wide-eyed as they rolled past the first of the trees. 

“When we get up there, if you don't mind, I want you to put all your camera gear into that big empty pack with the blanket beside you, Stiles,” said Derek, “and make sure you have a jacket, and water and a snack.”

“I don’t think I can do a really long walk,” he replied a bit nervously. “I mean, I want to see General Sherman and I want to photograph stuff, but it looks so steep here.”

“Don’t worry,” said the Alpha, winking at Scott, “we won’t make you walk too far."

They rolled to a halt on the gravel, and went up by the visitors’ center to the start of a nice clear paved tourist trail. Families smiled at the three of them, and a few perceptive ones nodded courteously to Derek as they passed. The sequoias were, just as advertised, astounding. Stiles felt a seriousness settling through him as he walked slowly along just behind the others. The trees were so tall, so old - and yet they were thriving still, so many of them, still growing and growing, on into the future. Derek was drinking in the mountain air and, whenever they had the track to themselves, the quiet, but Scott was sniffing and and staring off into the woods.

“What about here?” Scott whispered to Derek, looking at a scruffy side trail, that Stiles was a bit dubious about following.

“If we can see a good spot for Stiles to rest in down there, sure,” said Derek, “but we mustn’t let him get cold or scratched up or anything.”

“Scratched up?” said Stiles, grinding to a halt. “And I won’t get cold while we are walking, I don't think.”

“Yeah,” said Derek grinning at Scott, “but we feel like a run, and we want to set you up in a nice comfortable spot, where you won’t be too visible.”

“What will I be invisibly doing while you are running?” asked Stiles, a little edgy.

Derek looked around the little clearing into which they had emerged. It was a sunny spot. There was a rough ring of trees and a big boulder. The ground was fairly flat and it was well-screened from the main path. He shrugged out of his jacket, and pulled off his t-shirt, then bent over to undo his laces. Stiles gaped.

“You’ll be minding our stuff, buddy,” said Scott, grinning even wider, and stripping off too, like a short, cheeky Clark Kent without the need for a phone booth or a blue suit. He was in amazing shape, perhaps not quite fully grown, yet, but broad and muscular and without a freckle or a scar anywhere on his olive skin.

It became much easier not to look at Scott when Derek shoved down his jeans and briefs, because all Stiles' attention was focused on not letting himself stare at Derek, at his chest and back and his arms and hands ... Stiles wrenched his eyes away to the treetops.

“Hey!" he yelped, "so now I am the only one with pants!”

Derek stretched unselfconsciously, and looked at Scott, who was brimming with readiness to run. The pack bond was pulling a little more strongly than usual between them, and he felt so grateful to Laura for having brought Scott and his mother into the estate all those years ago. Stiles, meanwhile, was looking around at the trees and blushing. He was ridiculously cute in his shyness. 

“Hey, Stiles,” said the Alpha gently, “you might want to watch this.”

“Is it - wow. Right. You two are going to shift, then? Is it alright for people to see it?”

“Fuck people,” said Derek. “I want you to see. I want you to know what I look like.” And he and Scott shifted halfway. Their eyes glowed and they had little manes and claws. They looked massively strong and agile. Stiles stared. Derek looked him right back in the eye. His shifted voice was affected by his fangs, but vibrant and compelling.

“You good? Keep all our stuff packed. If someone comes, you won't have to explain who you're with, or where they are.”

“Yes, Derek,” said Stiles, imagining himself attempting to explain this to anyone. “How will I know that you two are okay out there?”

“Dude,” said Scott, glowing and grinning around a terrifying set of teeth.

“Right,” said Stiles. “Stupid question. Apex predators. Got it.” Scott loped out to the tree line. Stiles found himself looking at the dark hair on Derek’s flank. The muscles underneath shifted as the Alpha looked out towards the mountain peaks to the east. Even standing still, he radiated energy. Involuntarily, Stiles looked at Derek’s cock, in its thicket of dark hair. It was uncut, pale, hanging heavy and soft. Derek looked back at him.

“Sorry,” said Stiles, a bit shocked. 

“What for?” said Derek. He waited calmly. In his shifted forms, he felt like everything else moved more slowly. He had time to breathe, to think, to wait for other people to get where they were going.

Instead of trying to answer the question, Stiles said quietly, “Thanks for letting me see you.”

“Just wait till I get back,” said the Alpha, smiling mischievously around his fangs, and turned away to where Scott waited. In a moment they were gone. Stiles stared between the trees and listened, but heard nothing but the wind. He unrolled his blanket and unpacked his water bottle, and tucked the wolves’ boots out of sight. He settled in to have good look at the trees and the distant peaks before he decided what photos he wanted to take.

_____

The shadows were just starting to feel long when Stiles heard a long, sobbing, hollow note in the distance, joined by another. The howls were sustained on the cooling air, and he was unsure how to read them: how would he know distress in a wolf’s voice from pleasure, or from a simple declaration of presence? He packed away his camera and scrambled up the boulder, watching the woods. 

It hardly seemed like ten minutes before a big black wolf trotted into the clearing, and looked expectantly at Stiles on his hard perch. The complexity of the colors in his coat was partly lost in the shadow, but as he crossed into a bar of sunshine on the ground, lolling his tongue and panting, Stiles saw the fur as deep warm brown, with silver at the tips. He slithered messily down from the rock. The wolf approached him, waiting for an invitation. Stiles held out his hand, and the wolf put his cool wet nose into it, scenting him. Stiles tentatively ran his hand over the soft fur of the wolf’s head, and scratched behind one ear. The wolf butted his thigh.

It was a wild animal, and it was gracious, patient Derek. Stiles shuddered from the cognitive dissonance of it, and put his back to the boulder and half-fell, half-slid till he was sitting on the ground. “Fuck,” he muttered, “I can’t quite -“ - he rubbed his face. The wolf put his brow down against Stiles’ shoulder. “Derek, you have to remember - see, you have always known it - but… you,” and Stiles turned so that he and the wolf butted heads gently, “I have lived in the real - . You are magic, Derek, you are a magical creature,” and he sank his hands into the thick mane and looked into those red eyes, “and I don’t know quite how to deal with that, because I am not one. I am just - ordinary. Normal.” He closed his eyes, dropped his arms and leaned back on the rock, dizzy. He heard a soft noise and turned to find Derek squatting in his skin beside him, waiting.

“What do you mean?” said Derek, green-eyed, handsome, serious. “Do you mean you are just ordinary, like that tree, there?” He pointed at a massive young tree across from where they sat. It might have been three hundred years old, or five hundred, or older. It was either ordinary - doing nothing much, because it was a tree - or it was a growing, breathing, almost monstrously large being, at this very moment adding to its astonishing substance, vibrating finely in the wind, shifting and resting against the rocks, with its roots spreading invisibly below them in a hidden mirror image of its visible self.

“Are you guys okay?” called Scott, bouncing up, dick swinging with his stride. Stiles just couldn't cope. 

“Put your pants on, Scott, I’m begging you,” he wailed. "I give up! Everyone, please, let’s all put on our pants,” and he reached for the backpack and started doling out clothes. “I hope you both had a lovely run and you both look amazing when you shift, and Derek, your wolf is so beautiful, and so soft and - beautiful, but please, please let’s all have clothes on for a little while and go and get - a nice hot chocolate or a coffee or something, some postcards from the shop in case my photos look stupid, something normal. Please. I want to buy something for two dollars from a shop, if someone will lend me the money, okay?” 

Derek and Scott were trying not to laugh as they dressed. “We’ll get you a nice hot chocolate as soon as we get back there,” said Scott, pulling on his shirt. “With little marshmallows!”

Derek wordlessly handed Stiles a twenty from the wallet he had retrieved from his pants. It was good to be reminded that for nearly two months now, Stiles hadn’t bought a single thing to wear or to eat or to use, after years of buying things from shops all the time. His life had been entirely changed, drastically, irrecoverably, in terrible ways - and in hopefully not-terrible ones. It would obviously be utterly bewildering to anyone. Derek pulled the big pack with the blanket and the camera gear carefully out of Stiles’ unresisting hand, and slung it over his own shoulder. He bumped arms with him to bring him out of his trance. Then they all set off for the visitor’s center, as the sun slipped lower and the trees’ shadows became impossibly longer. 

He had to tell Stiles about the recording as soon as possible; before the two of them got to be any closer, before Stiles might feel that Derek had deceived him by withholding it. As soon as they got home, he would listen to the recording, and then play it for Stiles. And then he would find out if he was better or not. They would all find out if Stiles could bear to know what had happened, or whether his gentle servant would collapse back into silence and despair. 

_____

When he listened to it turned down low, at midnight in his private study, there was a section where he could hear the Sheriff coughing thickly and groaning in agony. By the end, Derek had his head in his hands and tears ran down his face. The recording was amazing. It would heal Stiles. Or possibly, it would break his heart and destroy his peace and leave him half-mad.

Trust Chris-fucking-Argent to have given him a poisoned chalice, and one that Derek absolutely had to hand to Stiles, at that.

  



	6. The Sheriff's Last Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They listen to the recording of John Stilinski's last words to his son.

Derek decided that the best time to play the recording of the Sheriff’s last message would be after dinner on the next Saturday, so that Stiles would be a bit rested from the trip, and would be able to take the next day for himself without it troubling anyone particularly, if he needed to be alone. 

Of course, if Stiles were reduced to the same condition he had arrived in, unable to eat or speak, or if he threw himself out a window - then a day’s rest wouldn’t make a lot of difference. Derek had also asked his Factor and Scott to be on hand when he told Stiles that the deputies had, unpremeditatedly but effectively, lied to him. 

He stayed more or less out of Stiles’ way for the few days in between listening to the recording and playing it for the man’s son. He heard that Stiles had been working in the darkroom whenever he wasn’t needed in the kitchen. His other young bitten Beta, Isaac Lahey, had come home from a short exchange in Nevada and had been dragged around by Scott to meet the four new people from the recent intake. Isaac had been a bit curious about Stiles.

“He must be very serious about the photography. Scott wouldn’t let me go near the door of the darkroom until Stiles came out and said he was between processes. Scotty wouldn’t even let me knock!”

“He has just started learning to do real photos.”

Isaac shook his head. “Digital ones are real too, Derek.”

“Paper ones then. He - he is trying to make a broader contribution.”

“Scott said he had a rocky start.”

Derek didn’t want to go into details. He hoped Isaac would be friendly with Stiles, if he left them to it. They were both orphans - even if Isaac’s history with his father was almost a negative image of Stiles’.

_____

“Are you - are you serious?”

“He panicked, and it’s a standard thing to tell relatives.”

“I know it is, Derek, I’m a cop’s kid.”

The Factor was a bit shocked. “Stiles, I know you must be terribly upset, but try to remember to say, ‘my lord’ when you address the Alpha.” He looked quickly at her, stung.

“Melissa, he’ll get there, it’s fine. He doesn’t - . Anyway. I have it here. Do you want to hear it now or later? It’ll be tough going.”

“Now. Of course I want to hear it now."

“Do you need some time to prepare yourself, Stiles?”

“It's a chance to hear his voice again. Do it.”

Scott moved closer to his mother's side as Derek pressed the button. After a moment of static the voices started. 

_“Officer down, Forest Rd between Cray Rd and Route - oh fuck it. Margie, I’ve fucked up, kiddo.”_

_“All officers, attend Forest Rd, near Cray Rd, officer down. John, I’m sending buses now! How many injured?”_

_“Just me. I called in the details on the car already on the tail-light. A redheaded meth user I'm guessing, mid 20s, nose ring, long sleeved tie-dyed shirt, illegible tatt on left hand… Oh Stiles is going to kill me. It was so nothing - just a courtesy stop really - and this idiot grabbed my arm through the window and pulled me in and shanked me twice, then drove off. Margaret, I’m not going to make it. And Stiles will be all alone. My poor little guy - not that he’s little any more -“_

_“Hang on, Sheriff - they will be there any minute, please don’t give up!”_

_“But to lose me too - and I know he loves me so…”_

“Stop it, stop it, please Derek -“

Derek had stopped the recording and come out from behind the desk as Scott and his mother had stood up. Stiles had his face in his hands.

“Are you all right?” 

“No! God no, not even close. - I am sorry, I am sorry Scotty - but you can’t be here. It’s private. He didn’t know anyone would listen to it - the other cops I guess - but you don’t want to listen, do you?”

“I can’t take it,” said Scott, holding hands with his mom, and touching Stiles’ shoulder. “I wanted to run away, but I didn’t want to leave you.”

“I want to be left. It should be just me, by myself. No one else should hear him.”

“We will wait just here, down the hall, Stiles, and if you want me or Scott, the Alpha can call us in.” The Factor drew Scott away, but as Derek opened the study door she said quietly, “You mustn’t leave him alone for a second, my lord. Watch him.”

Derek looked his understanding and closed the door behind her.

He crouched down again in front of the armchair where Stiles was huddled.

“Are you ready to hear more?”

Stiles was fighting his resentment. He was struggling to stay reasonable - and reasonably polite.“Why should anyone else get to hear it? He didn’t know he was talking to you - he didn’t even know I would hear it! Maybe even I don’t have the right to listen to it. Do you understand? He has no one to speak for him!” 

“You don’t have to listen to all of it right now. Or ever, if you don't want to. I can put it away in the safe.”

“No, don’t - I HAVE to hear it - what if he said something to me?” Stiles scanned Derek’s face. “You have heard it already! You listened to it without me, didn’t you?”

“I had to know how bad it was.” Stiles started to look terrified, and Derek hurried on. “I think you can bear it, but I can’t leave you alone to hear it for the first time. I won’t. I am sorry if you think your Dad wouldn’t have wanted me to hear it too, but I know he wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone.”

Stiles fretted silently. He opened his mouth to ask something and then shook his head.

“What can I do, Stiles? Tell me.”

“Could you - say no if you want - I am not trying to be -“

Derek reached out, cupped his hand around the back of Stiles’ calf, so the warmth seeped through the cotton and into the muscle, and waited. 

“Could you shift?”

Derek inadvertently took his hand back. “You want me to be the wolf?” Stiles nodded, abashed.

“But,” he said, “it won’t change - the wolf can understand speech!”

“I know.”

Derek was worried. “Why?”

Stiles’ face worked. “Maybe it will be easier if you are here, but - not the Alpha.”

This is nuts, thought Derek. He wants to put his hands into my fur, to pet me, to scratch behind my ears to comfort himself.

“Stiles - I’ll do it - but I need you to understand that I am not - I am not your dog!” 

“Of course not,” he said. “I know who you are.” He closed his eyes.

Derek was unconvinced, but he pulled the old CD player over to the edge of the desk, where Stiles could reach the play button. He stripped and changed with a slight effort. When Stiles looked and saw the big black wolf, he slithered off his chair and sat close to him on the floor, then touched the machine.

_“He was terrible when his mother died, Margie, he only half-believed it. I remember we went past the hospital turnoff weeks after she was gone and he said, “Can we just go back one time to check that Mommy isn’t there?” and I just couldn’t stand it, so I said there was no point. And then every time we went past the road for the longest time, he wouldn't say anything, but he would be looking back over his shoulder… he couldn’t let go of that fucking hope that it was all a mistake.”_

_“Can you get compression on the wound, John?”_

_There was a wheezy laugh. “Oh babe, I am pretty sure there isn’t much point. There is a lake of blood going on here. I’ve finally lost that last ten pounds, Stiles! Oh kid - oh my good boy - “_

Stiles was clinging on hard, weeping into Derek's neck, and his heart was fast but steady as the Sheriff had an ugly struggle for a moment. “It’s hurting him, I can see why Jason lied, I get it, I forgive him, I do,” he sobbed. Derek felt a surge of mad tenderness for Stiles. It was crazy. Maybe he **was** Stiles’ dog after all - maybe this almost painful longing to comfort the kid didn't quite feel human. Stiles whimpered when his father went quiet.

_“They are a minute away John, it’s going to be fine, honey, hang on!”_

_“Don’t think I have even a minute left, darling. Don’t cry. And tell Stiles not to be too sad. We are both gone now - me and his mom - and he is going to have a new life, at last, he is going to be fine wherever he goes because - “ he coughed, “he is such a smart guy, and he’s got an amazing heart full of love, and he’ll find a place to be where people understand him and see it, I just know, even if it takes a while. You aren’t alone baby boy, if there’s anything left… it’ll be how I felt about your mother and how I feel about you, Stiles. Beautiful …”_

The Sheriff sighed, and over Margie crying and asking him to answer her, there were distant sirens and noise. Stiles stopped it.

“He didn’t say anything else, did he, after that? He was gone?”

He butted him under the chin. When Stiles lifted his head, he looked him in the eye. That had been the end.

“How amazing was my Dad?” Stiles wriggled back. “Oh come back, Derek, please come back so you can talk to me!” Stiles closed his eyes hard. 

Sure, thought Derek. Whatever you need, Stiles, just order it up. He half-wanted to laugh as he was changing, and when Stiles looked to see if he was “back” he tried to glare at him. “Some people are actually scared of me, you know,” he said, wrestling his way back into his shirt. “Giant savage supernatural predator, over here.”

“Yes I am scared, grrr, monster,” said Stiles rudely, his face still pale and wet with tears. “Wasn’t he incredible! He is so brave - you heard! You heard him, Derek!”

“Yes. It is amazing. You are right.” 

“He is trying to comfort Margie!”

“Yes, he - he sounds like he - he sounded wonderful.”

Tears rolled off Stiles’ face, but he was smiling. “Derek! - he was right, he was right, too! I came here! And I found Scotty and I found you. Or you found me!” He gave a disgusting sniff and tried to wipe his face with his sleeve. “I really need a kleenex.” 

“Jesus,” said Derek, “here, blow your nose,” and he let Stiles blow, and then said, “hold still, there is wolf hair on you, not to mention - close your eyes, you idiot,” and he wiped his blotchy face clean. “You are still a bit disgusting, but we can live with it.”

“It hurt him though. You could hear it really hurt my poor Daddy.” Stiles bent down to cry again, hard. Derek just sat on the edge of the desk, self-consciously. This was clearly going to take some time. He went to the door and called softly to Melissa and Scott. 

“He’s okay, I think. Scott, can you get someone to sort out a hot chocolate for him and half-bottle of whiskey and some coke and ice and stuff for me? He’ll be a while.”

“I’m okay,” said Stiles, up off the chair, face and t-shirt wet. “You don’t have to…”

“What don’t I have to do, Stiles?” asked Derek, closing the door. “I am going to stay with you, I guess, till you don’t need me to shift forms or wipe your face or do anything else for you, and then I guess I’ll go to bed.” Then he was horribly ashamed. Where the fuck had that come from? Why would he lash out like that? He moved to attempt an apology but he didn’t get a chance. Stiles’ face moved so quick, Derek couldn’t quite follow the changes, but before he could ask what was happening, Stiles had seized him in a close, tight embrace.

“Oh Derek you are amazing, you were so wonderful to me, my - dear - lord, my Alpha, you stayed with me, thank you, thank you dear Derek!” Stiles pulled back to look him in the face for a second, then pulled him close again, “I know your father died and I think you never got to say goodbye and I am so, so sorry that happened to you, my lord, I bet he loved you so much and had so many things to say, dear Derek, I know he would have, and I know I am so lucky, so lucky to have had you to play me the recording and stay with me. I am so lucky, thank you, you are - “ and he had run out of words at last. He pressed his soft, wet cheek to Derek’s neck, then kissed him under his ear and held on.

Derek was so staggered and shocked that he just stood there and took it. When the maid came with the drinks, Stiles poured for him and mixed his drink (way too much coke but who gave a shit, really) and handed it to him, while the lord of the estate tried to avoid the eye of a seventeen-year-old lunatic who saw straight through his skin and flesh, and wasn’t afraid to press his dry, bony fingers straight into Derek’s chest if he thought it might help. Derek sat down in the other chair and drank his drink, and then another, while Stiles sipped his hot chocolate and shone with excitement. Some tide in his nature had been at low, low ebb for far too long, and now a giant wave had flooded every channel of him, so that he was hardly recognisable. The familiar notes of his scent were all there, though, bewildering in their sudden brilliancy and sweetness. Like thinking about what his father might have said to him if he had had a chance, being near this new Stiles seemed way too dangerous - he was volatile and direct, refusing to side-step for propriety’s sake. They sat in silence, until Derek got too self-conscious to stand it.

“Did the portraits from Springville work out?” he asked, relieved to have thought up a plausible topic.

Stiles frowned. “Yes, there are images there all right, but I am still trying to get a really good set of prints. I will have to think of some way to raise a hellacious amount of money for the estate because I have worked my way through a lot of supplies already.”

“We had them on hand,” said Derek. “I want to send some of your pictures to Cora in New York.”

“If it’s all right, Alpha, I will write to her with them and ask her to be very very critical. She is at art school, yes?” Her brother nodded. It was some sort of postgrad study she was doing. “I know she will see be able to see everything that is wrong with them. And then I will be all upset and disappointed - and then I will be fired up to do better! I promise!”

Derek wasn’t sure how much more fired up a person could be without having a stroke.

“Just - take it easy, Stiles.” He tried to smile. “Your dad’s recording was - it was wonderful - but it will have been a shock to you too.”

“Yes,” said Stiles immediately, actually looking shocked. “Yes. I will have to think about it. I can listen to it on my birthday every year or something. To hear his voice. I loved him so much Derek; I knew it all the time, too, because I was so afraid he would die. He didn’t have a strong heart. I had to watch everything that went into his mouth - but I could have let him have a doughnut, or bacon not on his birthday, after all, couldn’t I? It wouldn’t have made much difference. Poor Dad.” He shook his head to clear it. “Shall I go and get the photos, Derek? We could look at them now. I don’t mind. I can’t just think about Dad and nothing else, can I?”

Derek agreed. He let Stiles go bolting off because he wanted a minute to wipe his own face and regain some equanimity. When Stiles came back with a yellow envelope, they bent over the desk where there was good light to examine them.

They were beautiful, not in particularly sharp focus for the most part, but glowing and intriguing. The one where the girl had moved was like a double exposure, her face down and serious, and lifted, laughing. 

“Was she the youngest?” asked Derek, wondering about his Betas. 

“She was one of the middle two, Jean, I think,” said Stiles.

The one of Stiles was either hopeless or wonderful, depending on whether you wanted to be able to see his face. The focus on his ear and his hair and the side of his neck and shoulder was quite sharp, but the face was in darkness because the angle was wrong. There was only a gleam where his eye was and a lightness on the highest point of his cheekbone.

“I am so thin. Thinner than I was, before. I feel like a bundle of sticks sometimes.”

“You will fill out a lot in the next two years. You’ll probably get a pot belly.”

“No I won’t! I’ll be running again soon. I couldn’t before, but now…” Stiles yawned and stretched.

“Are you tired?” Derek felt exhausted, himself.

“Yes. I should head out to the barn, I suppose. I thought I would never sleep again, twenty minutes ago.”

“Come in with me, tonight, so you will have someone there if you wake up.”

“Thanks Derek,” said Stiles. “Do the betas all pile in with you too?”

“Oh, probably not tonight,” shrugged Derek. “Sometimes they like to come in for bit, just for company. It might be a wolf thing, I think.” He felt the need to be clear. “It’s not an orgy or anything weird, though, you know. They just hop in and push me round till they are comfortable.”

“I know,” said Stiles, sleepily. “It’s nice being in with your Alpha - it’s comfy! Scotty taught me.”

“I’m not carrying you, Stiles,” said Derek grumpily, as they bumped along the hall together, deciding en route that Stiles could borrow some pyjamas for tonight. “No matter how often you insist on crashing into me, you are getting there on your own.”

“Oh, I doubt it.” Stiles rubbed his face roughly and followed Derek into the Alpha’s high-ceilinged room, barely stopping to look around at the dark wood and warm red walls. He took the pants Derek offered him and started to change, too tired to be neat, sitting on the pallet and discarding his own clothes in a careless pile. Derek still felt a little drunk from the whiskey, though he knew it would fade very quickly. It was nice. He felt innocent and happy. This was ridiculous. Stiles had a pillow under his arm and another under his head before Derek got his boots off. He hopped in behind him and put his arms round Stiles, one under his neck, and one to pull his slim, tshirt-clad torso back against his own breast.

Stiles sighed and relaxed into him. Just as he was dropping off, he murmured something into the pillow. 

“Why do you think I am worried, Stiles?” said Derek. “I’m okay, really.”

In response, Stiles turned his cheek slightly, so that against the inside of Derek’s arm, he could feel Stiles smiling.

  



	7. A Very Big Day. Huge.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles and Derek start the next day together with a fight; they have an unpleasant visitor; Stiles proves formidable. He dazzles Derek.

Derek woke to feel soft pressure and a sigh against his side, under his arm. Stiles was only half-waking, still trying to hide from the morning light in Derek’s side. His face was damp and soft. Derek moved to accommodate him, pulling the sheet up, and trying to slip his shoulder under Stiles’ cheek. 

“Mnngghhh, sleepy,” groused Stiles, rolling in and putting his curled hand over his Alpha’s sternum.

“Shhh,” whispered Derek, somewhat against his better judgment, “you’re all right.” Stiles went back under the next moment, humming with his face and neck pressed into Derek’s skin. 

The feeling of his long lean body, slowed down and relaxed, narcotized Derek. He drifted too, turned on but without urgency, until Stiles' heart-rate spiked and he groaned. 

“You’re okay, it’s me,” said Derek.

Stiles’ easy relaxation was lost. He went careful and shuffled back, blinking. “Morning.”

“Morning,” returned Derek, rolling up on one elbow. “How are we doing?”

“We are good, I hope.”

“I hope we are good too.”

“Derek - “ Stiles flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “Listen - I don’t know how it is for you, but - you let me take - a lot of liberties with your person.”

“Should I be wearing my bonnet for this?” 

“Don't be - you know what I mean. You let me come in with you, and be close with you - but you always seem to be sort of - dispassionate - or you’re being kind or something - “

“Are you asking why I haven't grabbed your dick?”

Stiles flung his arm over his eyes. “O holy Mary, Derek, way to bring down the tone. Jesus.” His heart was pounding. “But, yeah.”

Derek nudged him with his knee. “You can’t think of any reason why I haven't?”

“Well - I know you know I like you, right?” - he uncovered his eyes and peeped for just a second and covered his smile and his blush with his arm again - “and I am pretty sure you like me - so is there some weirdo werewolf law against this, or something?”

Derek flopped onto his back too, and tucked his arm behind his head. “It’s not a _werewolf_ anything. Come on, Stiles, your dad was the Sheriff!”

Stiles smiled, and said, “Hey.”

He was thinking about the recording they had listened to the night before. Even the recollection of his father’s message literally warmed him - Derek could feel him breathing deep, and glowing. That was another thing, too, he thought ruefully. Despite these building waves of contentment, less than three months before, Stiles had been in chaos, distraught, suicidal, close to catatonic. He was recovering himself, but it had to be a terrible plan to put any kind of pressure on him.

“My point was - you are how old, Stiles?”

"Seventeen - but -"

"But nothing." 

“What - you're holding off cos I’m three months underage? Why would YOU care about that?”

“What do you mean? I’m a citizen, aren’t I?”

Stiles sat up. “You’re a slave-owning werewolf who prefers to be called ‘my lord Alpha!’ How are you a CITIZEN of anything?”

“I’m WHAT?”

Stiles just shrugged with his face. 

“I’m not a slave owner, Stiles. I don’t own you. We bought a seven year contract on your labor - from you, by the way - so that you wouldn’t be encumbered with an impossible debt for a seventeen-year-old.”

Stiles looked incredulous. “Derek, I am not trying to be rude - but I never consented to that sale! And if I am free, where is my wallet with my ID? Where is my phone? Where is my laptop with my emails?” 

Derek got out of bed and immediately realized he had to pee.

“Go on, you go first,” said Stiles, rolling his eyes.

Derek fumed but he dashed into the ensuite. When he came out, Stiles was hobbling towards him.

“Me next.” When Stiles came out, drying his hands on his pants, Derek was sitting on the edge of the bed looking like a thundercloud.

“Your wallet with your ID is either somewhere in that stupid room up the ladder in the barn, or is in the Factor’s office, as you were totally out of it when you arrived here. And your stuff is in storage.”

“My phone is in storage, is it? If I am free, why don’t I have it?”

“You already have a phone on the estate plan.”

“Oh yes - a ten year old Nokia which isn’t internet-enabled!”

“They are cheap and they are all we need for safety, Stiles, we don’t need Candy Crush Saga. We want to NOT live that life.”

“Who is we, now?”

“Family. The Hale Pack. The people who have bought into the Estate, who are close to being pack, too - like you!”

“So I and Cora have the same freedoms?”

“Of course not, Stiles! Please be reasonable. She is my sister and she is a born wolf of the Hale Pack. You only just arrived.”

“But if we both worked at KFC we’d have the same rights!”

“You wouldn’t if she was the owner’s heir! But if she wasn’t, and you both worked at KFC, you’d both be fucked, Stiles, you know this. You’d be living in poverty and at risk. Here you are part of an estate that sees you and your labor as valuable, where you are safe and your work has meaning. Out there, you’d be half-starved and living in some shitty boarding house.”

“As opposed to in your barn.”

Derek was losing his temper. “I don’t know why you are still in my stupid fucking barn, Stiles, I really don’t. You should have a room to yourself, or with someone in the Main Hall. I know why you were put out there, but I have no idea why you haven’t been moved.”

Stiles looked at him, with a hardening smile. “Derek, I think you might know very well why I haven’t been moved into a room with a room-mate. Don’t try to shit a shitter, dude.”

And that made Derek see red for a second. "What possible excuse can you have for speaking to me like that? Say 'my lord', and try to remember who the fuck you are talking to."

Stiles immediately went to the foot of the bed, and quickly dressed himself in the clothes he had been wearing the previous night. Derek watched, his anger crumbling. Watching the silent performance gave him time to think about what Stiles had meant: that having seen the relationship growing between them, McCall had left Stiles where he was, so that the Alpha might have private sexual access to him, as desired.

Which, he thought with an impulse to grind his teeth, was probably true.

Stiles stood straight, dressed, superficially calm, looking at Derek neutrally. “How much do you know about Jefferson, my lord?" he asked, and walked straight out the door. 

What? Derek asked himself incredulously. How the hell had that happened? Twenty minutes ago Stiles was drooling on his shoulder - but now - did he want to leave the estate? Would he put Derek in the impossible position of having to enforce the contract?

Derek looked at himself in his long dressing mirror. He had pulled rank on Stiles. His mouth tasted strange. He didn’t want deference from his - from the - he didn’t want Stiles to call him - anything - if he didn’t mean it, if he didn’t feel it. He wanted just the respect of one person for another. And he really wanted Stiles to understand and love the estate, and to - .

Derek would have quite liked a Jack and coke. He looked at the clock. It was 8:45 am.

_______________

When the Alpha came out his front door, he was hailed by his anxious Factor before he could go three steps.

“What is it?” he growled.

“Oh my lord - it’s such a nuisance - that awful Branford Tarke is coming here today. I couldn’t find a way to put him off. We will want to keep Stiles out of sight, I think.”

“Shit,” said Derek. “He and I had a - disagreement. I’m not quite sure where his head is at.”

McCall nodded neutrally, like the perfect servant she was. "I’ll get Scott to find him.”

“No - “ Derek had a flash of inspiration - “Can you see if Cook will release him to Boyd for the day? I suppose Tarke is going to arrive at 11am, so I can hardly avoid asking him to lunch.”

“Alpha, if he were going to arrive at 11, I would have set him up with a Devonshire Tea with me in the apple orchard the minute he got here, so that you would never have had to see him. 11.30 was apparently the earliest possible time. I swear he knows we can’t stand him, and he just enjoys pushing us.”

“His Alpha hates me,” said Derek. It didn’t make him happy to be hated, but maybe, when a thorough-going bastard like Deucalion thought you were doing being-an-alpha-werewolf wrong, it was a good sign. He stopped McCall as she went to race off, pulling her phone out, doubtless to text Cook.

“Can I ask you something, McCall?”

“Sure,” she said, turning back. He saw her running her eyes over the farm in the morning light to relax herself and to prepare herself to think laterally or compassionately as needed.

“Do you ever feel like you are my slave?”

She stopped breathing for a second. He let her stare at him, searching for the reason for the question, as she sucked in a massive breath. “What would you do if at the end of my contract, I said I was leaving the estate?”

Derek was shocked. That would be appalling, and it wasn't that far off. What would he do? “Where would you go?”

“Would that be your business?”

“You would tell me, I hope. It would affect what I would do.”

“What if I wanted to open a boutique hotel in town?”

“Then I would try really hard to get a produce contract with you so that you would buy Hale strawberries and feta and whatever else I could sell you, and I would have a sales meeting with you every few months, and I would try and talk you into getting one of the young wolves to work short contracts for you if you ever had a guest that needed security, and I would miss you a lot, and so would Scott.”

“Would you be angry?”

“Yes,” said Derek. “And then, after a while, no.”

“That’s what I thought - so, no, not really.”

He leaned on the doorframe and covered his eyes. “Please tell me that that was only a hypothetical.”

“It depends. Fourteen years is a long time, Derek. But I can’t see myself leaving the estate, because I love it and I care about the people here.” She smiled at him. “I think I feel some of what it is to be pack, and so leaving might be too hard to even think about.”

“Okay.” He had a moment of weakness. “Fine. One more question.”

“Shoot.”

“What was so bad about Thomas Jefferson? He wasn't a bad guy, was he?”

And McCall’s eyebrow shot up and she started to laugh. “Oh boy, Alpha, we got a live one when we bought that contract, didn’t we! I am not touching that one with a ten-foot pole.” Her smile grew gentler after a second. “You will have to ask Stiles whether Jefferson was a bad guy, Derek, and you will have to decide for yourself if it’s relevant. That is way too complicated for me. Good morning, my lord.”

Lame, went the voice in his head, weak, dumb and lame, the worst alpha ever. Everyone knows everything that goes on in your head because you are obvious and a fool and everyone is laughing at you because you are pining for a human boy who is too much for you to handle.

He went inside, drained, to definitely not look up Jefferson on the computer in his office.

\---------------------

Tarke arrived in his trademark Rolls right on 11.30, driving to within ten feet of the front door, and forcing a couple of laundry staff carrying stacked sheets to leap back out of his way. 

“No, no, no thank you,” he bawled at Derek’s occasional footman/receptionist, who had had to give up his morning’s work in his greenhouse to wait for this visitor. “I suppose down here it is normal for a wolf to be greeted by an ordinary servant, but that’s not how we do things up at the Marches, I can tell you. Where is Hale?”

“I am not sure, Factor, but Ms McCall is coming along now.”

“Very well. My principal business is with her in any case, so - ah, Melissa! Looking as busy as ever! I hope you are in the mood for a bargain or two!”

She hurried over, bracing herself for an hour of remarks on the antiquity of her equipment and methods, the laziness and cheekiness of her workers, the pathetically small scale of their operations, and the general superiority and majesty of Tarke’s Alpha and his Estate. It was painful, but she could take it. It felt like things were almost under control, until she walked him into the small dining room with its longish, narrow, oak-topped table, and saw Boyd talking to Derek and looking uncomfortable. Something had gone wrong, and Tarke all but sniffed the air in glee, as the other two hastily schooled their faces.

“Hale - and young Boyd, isn’t it? Anything up? Don’t mind me, if there’s a crisis I shall stay well out of the way!”

“No crisis, Branford. Hope you are happy with a simple little lunch - we don’t go in for fancy meals on weekdays.”

He bowed, but as Boyd went to walk behind him to slip away, Tarke straightened and stepped back to block him. “Now now, Vernon, don’t rush away! I hardly know any of Derek’s pack! Won’t you stay and have lunch with us, and tell me, one Beta to another, what you naughty lads get up to when old Derek here isn’t glowering at you and ruling the roost!” 

There was nothing for it. The four of them sat down. After a moment, Boyd said, “I was meant to be helping out.” No place was set for him. “I have to tell them,” and he pushed his chair back.

“Oh they'll work something out, that's what they are there for! So what are we having?” asked Tarke, helping himself to a bread roll by stabbing it with his fork.

“Cold cucumber soup and rolls, for a starter,” announced Stiles from the doorway, and walked up to the table in an immaculate white shirt and a white apron. He saw that Boyd was seated at the table, and put what he was carrying on the side-table immediately and went straight out again, returning with everything for a matching table setting in under a minute. Derek knew he must have run up and down the corridor as soon as he was out of sight. Stiles set the extra place, then returned to serve the cold soup from a little white enamelled metal pail, with a matching ladle. He started from behind Tarke, and served Derek last, so that Deucalion's factor saw his face full on at the end of the service.

“Why, I declare, it’s that pretty fellow, something-inski - from the auction before last, that you outbid me on, McCall, you remember! He’s thriving I see!” Stiles left his soup pail with the ladle in it on the side-table, nodded formally to his Alpha, and went out. “And was it one of the boys from Springville who told me that he had turned out to be something of an artist? - a photographer, was it? What a handy thing to have about the place.”

“How were your apples, this year, Factor?” asked McCall politely. “I seem to remember the timing of the cold snap must have been just right for Golden Delicious! I should have thought to ask you to bring us some.”

“Apples indeed," leered Tarke, "he was looking quite pink-cheeked and glowing, I thought.”

“He is not physically strong,” said Boyd, staring at his plate.

“You can’t have everything,” said Tarke, “and anyway, there is a wonderful tenderness now about him that more strength might rather spoil. You want to keep that naturalness, that vulnerability, don’t you?”

Derek was only half-aware of Melissa trying haplessly to steer Tarke onto some less appalling topic, because he was fighting to keep his breaths even. He had been a teenager when he had first met the richest Alpha in California, and the presence of his nineteen-year-old sister hadn’t been enough to discourage talk at Deucalion’s table of their host’s human conquests. At the Marches, even the word servant had always sounded like it was in quotes, as though the contracts were an hilariously-maintained fiction. Derek felt a deep gloom start to envelop him. Maybe his every satisfaction in his beautiful land and happy animals and his good people was really corrupted, predicated on his own position at the top of the pile. Maybe everything about the great estates was wrong, and the bondservants should never have been permitted to sell their labor to the packs in such massive lots, or to put themselves into the power of men like Tarke and his master - or like his Uncle Peter - or himself.

“Of course,” said Tarke, reverting to his former train of ideas,“a token resistance is charming, but…” and he sat back in his chair, quite content with the effect his remarks were having on his host, just as Stiles returned with light wooden trenchers of chicken skewers with mint yoghurt and garlic cream on a tray. Derek thought that if he survived this meal without having a stroke himself, he might go down to the kitchen afterwards and murder Cook for having chosen this, of all meals, as the one where she decided to show off in as many different ways as possible.

Stiles was impassive as he handed round the little trenchers, giving no sign that he was aware of any tension in the air. When Tarke checked him with one hand on his elbow as he went past on his way out, he stopped immediately, with no change of expression.

“Yes, sir?”

“Call me Factor, by all means, my dear young chap! Now how is Hale treating you?”

Derek felt a thrill at the perfection of Stiles’ poker face.

“Very well, Factor.”

“Not bored in this sleepy little place, are you? Ever fancy a change of scenery?”

“I like the scenery here, Factor.”

Tarke followed his gaze to Derek's face, and roared with laughter. “I’ll just bet you do, Mr Stilinski, and I can’t argue with you there. But I think you would like it very well up at the Marches, too. I rather think I bid too low for you, in retrospect. Would you like me to try and see what Hale here would take for your contract?”

Melissa and Boyd stared at their plates, their food untouched.

“I think I would like that,” said Stiles. Derek jerked in his seat, and stared at him.

"Would you really?" said Tarke, turning his body back towards Stiles, but watching Derek.

“I meant,” said Stiles with quiet intent, “I’d like to see you try.” Tarke twitched furiously to see his expression. Stiles nodded again to the head of the table and left silently.

“Well,” said McCall, “these little skewer things are just marvellous! Cook has really excelled herself for you, today, Mr Tarke. She must have heard we had an important visitor, and really gone to town.”

Tarke smiled sourly at his host. He wouldn't have minded giving that skinny little smart-mouthed shit a swipe with his claws that would alter his blooming looks forever and spoil some of Hale's fun, but like most sixty-year-old Betas, he would have had very poor odds of surviving a serious fight with Derek, and no odds all with Boyd in the room. Derek saw Tarke glance sideways at his Beta and do the sums. Boyd was a born wolf whose family had come from New Mexico to join the Hale pack during Laura’s leadership. His mother had been their Alpha, but they had had bad luck in a series of business ventures, and had decided to try working for a large estate, if they could find the right one. The day they came, dusty and weary, Laura had asked Boyd's old father to look at an 1960's tractor that her father’s regular mechanic had gotten bored with fixing, and had suggested that the little boy might help his dad out. She had sat on a shady bench with Mrs Boyd and her daughter, sharing some lemonade and chatting, until Derek wandered over, just in time for the old monster to start up with a roar. There had been laughter and applause all round.

“Was that a test, Alpha?” Boyd Snr had asked of Laura, cleaning his hands, happy enough to show his skills.

“Not just the tractor,” Laura had said, turning to Mrs Boyd, “Honestly? I was keen to see how big Boyd was with little Boyd. I see you are a patient teacher and a kind father, sir, and if your wife will agree, we’d love you all to stay a while and get to know us, and to see what you think about the Hale Pack.”

Derek took heart from this satisfactory memory. Laura had not been a slave-owner, had she? She had been as generous an employer as she was terrifying as a fighter. Their home was a good place. And - for god's sake - Jefferson had been a pretty amazing guy, after all. He wrote the god-damned Declaration of Independence! He made the Louisiana Purchase! He had outlawed the importation of African people for the slave trade! He had built Monticello - well his six hundred slaves had, anyway... Fuck it. Fuck Deucalion and his ugly-ass Factor. Everything was going to be fine. He grabbed a skewer and bit the chicken off it, and it was delicious.

“I think we owe Cook a little present, don’t you, guys? She has this whole - country - thing going on today - “ he waved his hand at the jug of daisies in the middle of the table - “it’s all a sort of simple-life theme, isn’t it? Pitchers and pails?”

“I think her new side-kick might have been behind some of that,” said Boyd, rather bemused by this sudden change of gear in his Alpha. “They were looking in the back store-room the other day, checking over old things we haven’t used for a while and getting all excited.”

“Do you want a beer, Branford?” asked Derek suddenly. “We don’t normally drink in the day, but if the guys are going all out downstairs, let’s let them know how they are doing!” And he went to the doorway and called down the corridor, “Hey Stiles, can you send up some beers?”

There was no audible response, but after a moment, Stiles reappeared with two other young staffers, bright-eyed and excited and a bit dishevelled, who brought four frosty bottles and two glasses for McCall and Tarke, and new coasters for the table for each place. Stiles cleared the previous course without a word and vanished down the corridor, and the two girls clattered after him, the two of them returning after a minute with a small tray each on either arm, bearing neat steak sandwiches pinned together with tiny American flags, with curly fries and cokes and little dishes of ketchup on the side.

“Isn’t this nice?” said Melissa, genuinely pleased. 

“I suppose it’s cute, if you like comedy food.” Tarke was still seething. 

“All I care about is: everything that’s meant to be cold IS cold, and everything that’s meant to be hot is hot,” said Derek, munching his fries and grinning. 

“All you care about is that the steak in your sandwich is half-raw,” said Boyd slyly, catching Melissa’s eye.

“That’s me,” said Derek. “A nice bloody steak and a happy home, that’s all I ask.”

The talk turned purely agricultural until the two shining girls arrived with four little glass boat-dishes with two little round scoops of strawberry ice-cream in each, fixed with fudge sauce and nuts and whipped cream and cherries.

“A simple lunch, indeed,” said Tarke, as Stiles reappeared in the doorway with little cups on a tray, “you must be cracking the whip to keep that lot downstairs working to your requirements, Hale - you are quite the sybarite, aren't you?”

“Oh, please - they do whatever they want,” said Derek, invulnerable, with a shrug. “If they felt like slapping together some hot-dogs, that’s what we would be getting. And I wouldn’t care, that’s the thing. I want them to be doing what they like, honestly, and if it’s rustic fancy sundaes and - is this greek coffee?”

“Yep,” said Stiles, “we are trying out a few new things.”

“It’s like mud!” said Tarke, looking dubiously into his cup.

“It’s exactly like greek coffee is in Greece,” said McCall. “And it smells divine!”

“Thank you, Factor,” said Stiles, sweeping out with the girls, while Derek was still sipping curiously at the coffee.

“It clears the head,” said the Alpha. “Just the thing.”

_______________

That night in his room in the barn, Stiles had a visitor.

“Can I come up, please?” said the Alpha, remembering being there with Melissa and that white, silent shape.

“Yes, of course,” said Stiles.

There was really only the nice tidy bed or a spindly-looking chair to sit on. Derek asked permission with a gesture, and sat cross-legged at the other end of the bed from Stiles.

“Thanks for your part in the lunch. And Boyd told me he had already offered to help in the kitchen today, as soon as he heard about the visit, so that’s why the instructions didn’t quite produce the right outcome."

“Cook said, the message she got was, ‘at the Alpha’s request, ask Stiles to work with little Boyd today’. She had no idea that that meant ‘put him absolutely anywhere on the estate except in the dining room at lunchtime’.”

“Little Boyd! Do you know Laura called Vern that, the first day he came?”

“The VERY first day, was it?” Derek knew that Stiles was mocking his sentimental Alpha, but he didn’t care. 

“Shut up, Stiles.”

“So: the whole keeping-me-away-from-Deucalion's-creepy-pimp plan didn’t quite happen, did it?”

“As if we needed to - you handed him his balls on a plate!”

“I wasn’t sure if you got that - what those little sundaes were about?”

“Stiles - you didn’t! How - ?“ Derek's mouth hung open. 

"Oh we were doing ice-creams already. I just made her change to strawberry flavour at the last moment."

Derek laughed aloud, which Stiles had never seen him do before. He shivered, then hung his head sheepishly.

“Being a sarcastic little shit was never a problem for me. Annoying people was my special gift, before. And I could be - can be - pretty mean.”

Derek caught his breath and shrugged. There was something to be said for being able to defend yourself, anyway. Stiles shifted around.

“I heard what that Tarke guy said, you know, at the auction. When they said he was coming today, I knew it was him. Even back then, even though I was half-out of my head, I knew that if I got sold up there I would be being fucked by someone sooner or later, whether I really wanted it or not. All I could think of was how fast everything had turned to shit - ten days between being loved and protected and belonging to my dad and my school and being a person and being free - to trying to fight off some evil fuck a hundred times stronger than me and losing, losing myself, everything…” He held out his hands to Derek, who took them. “What I didn’t know for sure was how different it would be to come here, to you.”

Derek was looking down at those thin, dry hands. 

“And part of it is, and I have thought about this a lot - I haven’t had much experience, but I think I might know some things about myself that make it really important that I am with someone who cares about me and cares about what I want.” 

“Isn’t that important to everyone?”

“Of course. But… well. If I am right about myself, we’ll find out.”

“What do you mean? I don’t think I get it.”

“All right, then, Derek, kiss me.” And Stiles closed his eyes and leaned forward.

Derek leaned and touched his lips to Stiles’ for a long, long moment - until he took him by the shoulders and pulled him, half-laughing, half-gasping into his arms in a chaotic tangle of big bony limbs. He kissed him again, a little harder - and Stiles’ mouth opened softly and he moaned. Derek held Stiles firmly, by the hard back of his head, and stared at his face. His eyes were barely open, and he looked half-conscious. His muscles fell long and slack - he was utterly beautiful. Derek nuzzled and then bit very softly at his neck - and he tensed and collapsed again.

Derek had fucked around a little, strangers, one-nighters - and he had never seen anyone react quite like this to his touch, or reacted like this to someone himself. He kissed Stiles again, and licked into his mouth, and Stiles sighed like his heart was breaking.

“Tell me - what do you want? Is this all right?”

“Oh Derek - I want you to - oh, OH!” cried Stiles, as Derek lightly stroked his hip through his pants. “I can’t, I can’t - “

“Shall we stop, Stiles? Am I pushing you?”

“No, no,” panted Stiles. He struggled to open his eyes, and murmured, “Do anything you want, Derek, please, do it,” and Derek saw it, felt the answer in himself. He was aware that he wanted to hold Stiles down firmly and maybe fuck him, to make him grip the bedstead while he came in his mouth - not because he felt cruel, but because Stiles was so deeply submissive. Even now, a few gentle kisses and caresses had his boy plummeting out of his own control. The passivity in his responses might change as he got more used to his own body, and to Derek’s; but that instinct to yield so entirely, so trustingly, might not. 

So that was it. There was no way this was starting when Stiles was a minor. Derek brushed his thumb across his hot cheek, and blew on his closed eyes. Stiles made an amazing sound. Derek was rock-hard in his jeans. It hurt.

“Come up, again, Stiles, come back to me now,” said Derek, wondering if that was how it was done. Stiles inhaled sharply through his nose and opened his eyes. Derek waited for him to speak.

“That was what I thought it might be like with you. What I hoped, really. It was more overwhelming, even.” His body was still totally relaxed.

“You turn me on so hard, Stiles, it’s insane.”

“I know the other reason why you wanted me to spend the day with Vern.”

“Why?”

“Because you wanted me to know that Vern would never ever own a slave, or work for anyone who would. And he wouldn't be one. And I saw it.”

“I thought you and Vern might talk, is all.”

“No need. He’s great.”

“And by the way, Stiles?"

"Hmmm?"

"Our third President was a genius. And kind of hot.”

“AND he was a giant hypocrite!”

"He was a major figure of the Enlightenment!"

"His fucking experiments in landscaping and architecture were all carried out by his eight zillion slaves!"

“I bet Sally Hemings thought she was doing okay.”

“Oh, fuck you,” and Stiles turned into Derek’s shoulder.

“We can’t do anything til you are eighteen, kid. You can’t say yes to me, because you can’t say no.”

“I could if I wanted.”

“Prove it.”

“I don’t wanna,” and Stiles tucked up his legs and pushed his face hard against Derek’s chest. “But, okay. No proper sexytiemz till my birthday.”

“Jesus. And you have to move into the Main Hall tomorrow.”

“S’all right. I am sick of going up and down a ladder to take a dump anyway.”

"What about to pee?"

"Do you really wanna know?"

"Ugh, no. Why are we always talking about you peeing?"

“Probably cos you are a big giant pervert? Sorry. Are we good? I'm sorry I said you were Thomas Jefferson.”

“Jefferson was a legend, you idiot! And yes we are.”

“That was kind of a big day, today, Derek.”

“Huge.”

“Hey, how good was my dad, last night?”

“He was amazing, Stiles.”

“Well, goodnight then,” said Stiles, and fell asleep like a kitten.

Werewolves could live a long time, in the right circumstances, thought Derek to himself. He could live another seventy years with Stiles waking up on him in the morning and fighting with him and fucking with his enemies and making him cute things and swooning from his kisses and telling him to fuck off and falling asleep in his arms, radiating contentment. Twenty-five-thousand-odd iterations of that would probably make him a happy guy.

He laid his young man down, and drew the blanket over him and smoothed his cheek, and slipped off his shoes, and climbed down the ladder in the dark.

  



	8. Cora, Melissa, Lydia, Allison, Mom, and Laura.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cora comes home and is unsure about Derek's new mood; Melissa is unsure about Derek's plan for the entertainment of Stiles' friends; Lydia is anxious; Allison is charmed; and Derek tells Stiles a story. He also sees Stiles' body all white and wet and cool from swimming in their pond, and kisses him in the woods.

Cora had come home.

She had appeared unheralded at the front door at nine o’clock one night with a stuffed sports bag over her shoulder and hugged Derek hard with one arm. “Hey, bro! How’s it hanging?”

Because he was a bit overwhelmed, seeing her unexpectedly, Derek got flustered. “I didn’t know you were coming! - it’s only a week’s break, isn’t it?”

“Yup. It’s a good thing I know what an anal fuckwit you are, or I would get upset that you don’t look happier to see me.” She hefted her bag, but he wrestled it away from her in a ridiculous scuffle, featuring some girlish slapping and pushing on either side. Once he had it over his own shoulder, she was panting and grinning. He frowned at the floor of the hall.

“You know I - “

“You couldn’t be happier, I know. I know that constipated glare is your happy face, you spaz. Now where’s all the whiskey at?”

They convened in his study. The night kitchen guy brought the usual tray - Jack Daniels, ice in a bucket, cokes, glasses, and Cora managed it all. She asked for a sandwich too, but when it came, Stiles brought it.

“Hey - I know who you are - you’re the photographer!”

“Nooo,” said Stiles, putting the sandwich plate on a side table and moving it next to her. “I’ve got no idea what I’m doing!”

“Yep, it’s you, alright. I know your ear from the candlelight photos! Right, bring every single thing that’s worth looking at up here right now. Derek just wants to stare at me and look goofy, like he always does when I come home, so I may as well do something worthwhile, while he gets it out of his system. You can sniff me like fifty times from over there in your comfy chair, right, D?” 

“What happened with Bobby?” asked Derek, not deigning to answer these sallies. 

“Oh well,” said Stiles sheepishly, ”I was still putting away stuff from dinner when he was making sandwiches, so, I thought I would bring it and get a peep at your sister, because, you know.”

“Because he heard that I was the hottest, smartest werewolf chick ever, and he wanted to see ALL THIS for himself.”

“Basically, yes, my lady.”

“What the fuck?” shrieked Cora, “your WHAT now?” 

“Or,” said Stiles, backing towards the door, “Cora.”

“Thank you, you weird little homo.”

“Cora!” remonstrated Derek, horrified.

“Bi!” corrected Stiles, “well, probably, anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah. Ok, you, go get the photos and get back here. We’re going to get our drink on.”

When Stiles came back, Cora proceeded to look at every print he had - of the estate, of Springville, the candlelight shots, the giant trees, and a new extended series of the wolves training that Stiles had done recently - and to savage every single image in its turn. She complained about poor focus, wrong focus, lack of contrast, too much contrast, about every tiny hair, fleck, mark or smudge that appeared in the prints, about the composition of the photos, the cropping, the angles, the depth of colour, and the choice of subjects. Derek didn’t know how Stiles could stand it, but instead of looking upset, he was nodding, frowning at the images, taking it all in like winter sunshine. Derek may as well have been on Mars for all the attention they paid him. It was kind of like a dream, sitting there drinking, getting to watch them both as if he were invisible. As the stack got lower, he noticed that Cora had been sorting as she went. There were two piles, one very big and one quite small. Stiles was asking technical questions and getting fast technical answers, no quarter being asked or given. At one point, still listening avidly, he picked a clean piece of scrap paper out of the waste paper basket, and a pencil off the desk, and made a half-page of notes in very tiny, tidy handwriting. On the back of the Hale Estate photos, there were some long typed passages stuck to the pictures. Cora was scathing about this.

“Don’t glue shit to images, Stiles, Jesus.”

But she stopped and read the text on each one, looking back at the pictures.

“Hm,” she said, “that’s not bad. You can write, even if you vandalise your own work.”

“Thanks,” he said, meaning it. “You can’t tell whether you can or you can’t, yourself, you know.”

“No,” said Cora, topping up her drink a lot, “and photography and painting are the same. I can see no-one has talked any sense to you about them,” and she looked at Derek.

“I just thought they were beautiful,” said the Alpha.

“Oh, no,” she said illogically, “a lot of them are, they are just a mess and technically awful and - well, I’ll come down tomorrow and have a look in the darkroom, Stiles, and see what’s going on down there.”

“I’ll be with Cook ten till two, then off till four.”

“Two-ish it is. I ought to be awake by then, if old Yappy here doesn’t talk my ear off all night.”

Stiles shook his head, made a grimace of mingled excitement and apprehension at Derek, and melted out of the room.

“Okaayyyy,” said Cora, putting her feet up, “it makes total sense that that kid is madly in love with you,” and she held up a sequence of photos of Derek from the little pile, starting with the two of him training the pack that had caught the eye of the Springville people, “because you are all noble and melancholy AND the handsomest bastard in California apart from your slightly freaky teeth, buuut I didn’t expect YOU to have lost your mind over him! How fucking old is he, bro? He looks like jailbait to me.”

“He’ll be eighteen in a few weeks.”

“That’s lucky, isn’t it? You holding out all right over there?”

“It’s fine. He - we are clear about the waiting thing.”

“Oh, so it’s all settled, is it? He knows how you feel?”

Derek felt a storm rising inside him. “He’s good, Cora. Stiles is a good guy.”

“Oh wow, Derek, I’m sure he is. He seems great. So the plan is - in a few weeks he’ll be legal, and then the two of you will be doing it like mad, and then he will move out of the Hall and into the big house, which everyone else down there will be totally fine with, by the way, and then you’ll be more or less married to an eighteen-year-old boy with no idea about what he is getting into, and he’ll be okay with us wolves occasionally busting into his bed to pile in with you, and it will be great for a few years until he notices that he doesn’t have a high-school diploma and he isn’t at college and he is living on a farm with a nearly-thirty-ish werewolf boyfriend instead of fucking anything that moves and getting a doctorate at Berkeley - because he seems like a smart kid, Derek, like there is some force of character there, isn’t there? Maybe a bit of intellectual clout? And then what, Derek? You’ll decide to release him from his contract so he can go get a $60 000 degree from somewhere suitable - which you will pay for - which again, everyone downstairs will be fine with? Or is the plan that you’ll bite him? Has he even said he wants the bite? Or haven’t you two gotten that far?”

Derek couldn’t speak.

Cora waited a while, then knelt in front of his chair.

“Sorry.” She touched his knee. “Sorry, but…”

He flinched away from her. 

“Derek, am I wrong?” 

It was too late, already, though, wasn’t it? thought Derek furiously to himself. Whatever happened next was just going to happen, even if the outcome was that Stiles left him, or hated Derek for wanting to keep him on the estate, or … 

Why would Cora come back - which was all he ever wanted her to do - to not UTTERLY abandon him, after everything - and then hurt him so, when he was actually happy, for once, for once in his miserable life? Why did she have to be so cruel to him when she - well, she and Stiles - and Scott - and Melissa and Vern and his sister, now an alpha after their mother’s death, off somewhere looking for a place to be, but still part of him, Vern and Judy and Isaac - they were all he had left - well - all of them, and Cora and the farm people, Bobby and Cook and the hothouse team…

He breathed easier. “I don’t know if you are wrong or not. I have no way of knowing what will happen in the future, do I? I can only try and do what seems like the right thing, now, for me and for him. He doesn’t want the bite, no. I offered it with a witness, properly, and he said he doesn’t want it.”

“Okay,” she said cautiously. “Okay. Just - “

“If you are going to say, don’t get in too deep too fast, or anything like that - gotta tell you - thanks - but you’re about four months too late.”

“And he got here -“

“Four months ago, give or take.”

And now she started to smile, ruefully. “That bad?”

“I think it happened before he ever spoke more than ten words to me. No kidding. The scent of him, by itself.”

“My god, Derek, seriously?”

“Seriously. He was in the big barn with the cows; he’d been hand-feeding a calf, and he was just there, asleep. Fucking killed me.”

“God, I hope you are right about him being a good guy.”

“Find out for yourself. And you mustn’t be -“

“What?”

“Cora, I only have one of you left, nothing and no-one could ever - “

Then she was hugging him tight. “I love you so much, bro, you know I do. I think you are the weirdest person I know - but I really want you to be happy. I’m not jealous about your boy - I am just scared for you. We have lost so much, Derek, and you stay here where everything reminds you of it every day, and just suffer - I don’t GET it, honey, I just don’t. Oh let me go a bit, Der, you are going to break my ribs…” She sat back on her haunches, and handed him the bottle. “Here you go, get a little drunk for a minute and don’t start crying on me, okay?” She petted his knee, while he took a slug and politely wiped it with his sleeve, before handing it back.

“Oooh, my brother, the fancy gentleman,” said Cora, in her hard, dark voice, grinning. She knocked back a good mouthful herself, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

___________

The next day the Factor caught up with him when he was frowning at some newly-baled hay, trying to work out if it was wrapped right. “Alpha, is it alright with you if two friends of Stiles’ come visit him tomorrow?”

“Who is it?”

“Two girls from his school - Lydia and Allison? They called up together, and they seemed very polite on the phone, and Stiles was trying not to look desperate to see them when I was talking to them. He was in the office looking up some recipes, and when I asked if they should come, he said, ‘Oh, you’ll have to ask Derek if he thinks it’s appropriate,' and then he chewed off all his fingernails in two minutes because he was waiting for me to say I would ask you.”

“Sure. Tomorrow is Thursday, yes? Say four o’clock to the two of them. We can ask Cook to do omelettes - or something easy with no prep - push dinner back till eight, and let Stiles and the visitors watch us all train from five o’clock. Put out some bales for them to sit up on. And then get some of our young people - anyone, really, that wants to come - to walk out to the pond for a swim, if it is still warm enough. Let everyone know in Hall, will you?”

“That is quite a fete for two strangers!” 

“It’s partly for Cora, Melissa, she came home last night!”

“I heard.” She smiled.

“And - one of those girls isn’t really a stranger.”

“Which one?”

“Stiles’ Allison is Allison Argent.”

She looked dumbfounded. “Will you - will it be okay?”

“She’s a seventeen-year-old girl who cares about Stiles and who never did a thing to me,” said Derek, feeling a dragging fatigue in his breast despite his words. “Even Chris - I am almost completely sure that he had no idea at the time, about his father, or - about the other one. I saw Chris afterwards, you know, at the time, out there, throwing up in the trees. He tried to speak to Laura, but she couldn’t stand to look at him. And I saw him recently at the police station after Stiles came … and he and John Stilinski were friendly. So.”

“So we are putting on a circus, for an Argent.”

“We - . I am trying to do the right thing. I am trying, Melissa, please don’t make it harder.”

“My lord,” she said, “are you planning to tell Cora exactly who this girl is?”

He snarled and his eyes flashed red. His Factor stared straight back at him, steely, unflinching. 

“Well, well,” she said, very coolly. "You haven't done that at me for a while. Not since you grew up, anyway.”

“What is happening to me,” cried Derek, mostly to the sky, his chest heaving, “what is happening, why, why would I - oh Melissa, I have to beg your forgiveness, please, please tell me you can forget that, or I will - “ - he gave up, and turned away. “I’ll see you later." He started to walk away.

She took a few quick steps after him, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Stop it.”

He stopped and didn’t turn around.

“I forgive you. I’m sorry - I got angry too. I am not scared of you, Derek. You couldn’t make me scared.”

He touched her fingertips where they rested without looking at her.

She sighed. “You want to make peace with anyone you possibly can.”

“Yes.”

“So, then. Training. Swimming. Omelettes.”

He turned around. “Cora doesn’t want to live here. Not really. She is happier to just - move on. She isn’t trying to reconcile herself to everything that… not that I can reconcile myself to it, either, obviously. I am a disaster, Melissa, I know that. I just have to keep trying.”

“You should try to do whatever you think you have the strength for, Alpha.”

He made a noise of self-derision.

“You are changing, you know. You never used to talk. Now you talk, you get excited about things.” 

He turned to look at her. “Don’t praise me, I am begging you. It’s no excuse, I know, but I lost my mother, and then I lost Laura - it is bad, very bad, for a wolf to lose their Alpha - and I - I know I am still broken inside.”

“Hush, Derek. It’s a pretty great excuse really, when all you did was get mad. Let it go.”

__________

The two schoolgirls were as lively and pretty as any of the girls on the estate, thought Derek, watching them arrive in Lydia’s car from his window, and jump out, looking around brightly. They hugged Stiles between them when he ran to them. Squashed between them in the courtyard, Stiles looked up to Derek’s window. As he was probably sprung anyway, he threw up the sash and waved his hand. Stiles called out to him at once.

“This is Lydia and Allison, Alpha, come to visit me!” Allison looked at Stiles quickly when he used the title.

“Lucky you,” called Derek gallantly. “Did they bring their stuff for the pond?”

“Yes,” said Lydia, eyeing him. Her confidence blazed brighter than her hair. “We have to talk to this one first, if that’s all right.”

Something about her manner clearly suggested that if that wasn’t all right with him, Derek could fuck off and die at once, and it wouldn’t trouble her in the slightest.

“Of course,” he said, “Forgive me for intruding.” The Argent girl was looking at Lydia incredulously. She was, if anything, even prettier than her redheaded friend. At that moment, Scott ran up into the courtyard, and all but skidded to a halt at the sight of the visitors.

“Hey Scotty,” said Stiles, “this is Lydia and Allison.”

Scott’s jaw hung open. Derek followed his eyeline and felt a sudden longing to bang his own head on the wall.

“Okay, well, have fun, guys,” he said, shut the window and collapsed into his chair, feeling a thousand years old.

_________

At training, after a solid programme of Tai Chi and sprints and sparring, Scott tried to do an unprepared standing back tuck and broke his arm. It was a clean break and it healed at once, but he was embarrassed.

“I still want to go swimming with everyone, Derek, is that okay?” he murmured.

“Yeah, he can’t let ‘everyone’ down, bro,” said Cora, snidely.

“Is he all right, really?” asked Allison, who had given a little scream at the sound of the break, and now looked terribly worried, gripping Stiles’ arm.

“Don’t worry, Allison, I’m fine!” called Scotty, who had obviously been hanging on every word spoken by the little party perched on their nice rostrum of bales of hay. “It’s better already.”

“Can I hit him a few times, Derek?” asked Cora, sotto voce.

“Hit the arm again,” suggested Boyd. “Not hard, though.”

“But hard enough to make him cry in front of that chick,” said Isaac, nodding and smiling back at the girls while stroking Scott’s back, as if he was being particularly comforting.

“Shut up, you idiots,” said Derek. “Someone do something that doesn’t make us look like the five biggest dorks in California, I beg you. Think.”

“Well, as usual, I brought out the emergency bulk pack of marshmallows, boys,” hissed Cora, scrambling in her kit bag, “so run away and we can play catch! You first, Vern!” and they finished up a perfectly serious session of physical training with a few minutes where they all capered around, sprinting to catch marshmallows in their mouths from Cora’s sensational throws, most of the time at the mid-air apex of unnecessarily spectacular leaps. Even Derek raced after the ridiculous puffy sweets when it was his turn, while Stiles and his visitors, and a few of the younger staff who had started to come out of the buildings with towels and goggles in hand, screamed with thrilled laughter. 

Then the party set off to hike to the pond. There were about fifteen of them, and as Derek had guessed, most of them were youngsters.

Lydia walked between two of the estate girls, one who mainly worked in laundry and one who assisted the factor and worked in the dairy. She was gaily making conversation with the two of them, in a style that had all the careless, meandering, feminine charm of a waterboarding at Guantanamo.

“Oh, cows are so pretty! So that’s how many hours a week, Betty? Do you get a day off on Sundays?”

Betty rolled her eyes at Sunitra over Lydia’s head. “Do you think the cows take Sundays off, too?” 

“But that means you work seven days a week!”

“Come on, Lydia,” said Sunitra, “We both get it. You want to know if Stiles is okay here.”

Lydia stopped dead and stared at them both. Derek slowed down as much as he dared - next he would be reduced to dislodging an imaginary stone from his boot, if they didn’t move on.

“Is he?” she asked seriously. “Are you?”

The girls grabbed her by the arms and dragged her forward. “Yes, yes, Lydia, we are both fine, he is fine, it is all fine.”

But she dug in her heels, and Derek had (literally) to stoop to deception, or miss what was being said. He angled himself behind a tree and started on one set of laces.

“He talked about Derek almost the whole time, earlier.”

“Well?” said Betty wryly. “You’ve seen the Alpha.”

“But is Stiles - are they - ?”

“Are they WHAT?” said Sunitra, getting annoyed. “Are you asking if Stiles has Stockholm Syndrome?”

“I’m asking you, Sunitra, one woman to another, if my friend is getting raped by a guy who could throw his skinny ass over a house, so do you mind answering the question? I’m asking if, having been sold off here when I wasn’t around to ask any questions or do anything to protect him when he was half out of his mind, if my friend from school is getting fucked by his brand new werewolf MASTER? Is that plain enough for you? If we are all going to put our cards on the table?”

Sunitra was furiously indignant, but Betty shushed her, and spoke carefully.

“Not at Hale, Lydia. Never. No way. Derek would kill anyone - I don’t mean kill - but he would never tolerate coercion here. I am not saying it could never happen on an estate - Sunny, don’t be rolling your eyes at me! - You know what they say about their Alpha up at the Marches, and some other places, too - yeah, you do! So it’s a question. She is right to ask, in a way, because she is his friend, and the Alpha and Stiles are…”

“But Derek thinks the sun shines out of his eyes!” said Sunny.

“He does?” asked Lydia.

“It’s kind of cute, actually,” said Betty. “You see them walking together, and Stiles just crashes into him, and the Alpha is like plodding on, going in a straight line, and then after a minute Stiles just - “ and she was obviously demonstrating Stiles’ affectionate body-slamming technique on Lydia, because the girls were laughing and in motion and they actually came up to Derek’s tree before he could decide whether ducking out of the way was even lamer than getting caught. He looked up at them as he was putting his boot back on.

“Was there a stone in your shoe, my lord?” asked Sunitra deferentially.

“Anything we can help you with, Alpha?’ asked Betty, even more sweetly.

Derek bowed to the three of them, and extended his arm in a ‘lead on’ gesture, deciding that there was nothing he could say that could make him look less of an idiot.

Lydia looked on him curiously, without perceptible scorn, though, so that helped.

__________

The swimming pond, way out in the Preserve, was of an impressive size. Because of its reedy shores, some carpenter in Derek’s grandparents’ generation had built a long wooden jetty from a high grassy bank out into the deep part, with a couple of metal ladders along its length, running down into the water. The pond was fed by a spring that seemed to flow even in the drier years, and a little creek ran out of it at one end in wet seasons. The kids usually screamed from the shock when they jumped from the end of the jetty into the cold green water, but it was so beautifully fresh in there that after a while, it was hard to force yourself to get out at all, unless of course you were human, and prone to hypothermia. Derek had never really learned proper freestyle - he wasn’t sure if he could actually be drowned or not - but he breast-stroked around for the first few minutes, lapsing occasionally into sidestroke or dog paddle as people called to him.

Stiles had sat around on the jetty for a while, watching, then flung himself in, swimming strongly and quite fast in a mad pattern of radiating lines that went from any shallow point where his reaching toes touched the weedy bottom, which creeped him out, then back to the middle, then out towards the edge again. Derek climbed out after a few minutes because he felt most comfortable if he was watching over the human swimmers, counting and tracking them easily, just in case any of them found themselves in strife. Soon Stiles got cold despite his frantic activity, and he climbed up a ladder with his teeth chattering a little. He came to sit by Derek on the very end of the jetty.

“What are you doing, Derek?” he asked, inching up against his warm, bare side, dripping water all over him.

“Oh you know,” said Derek. “Just keeping an eye out.” 

“Worried about sharks?”

“Do you know that people in trouble don’t really splash around, like in the movies? People who are drowning go quiet from the effort.”

“So you are looking out for someone who has gone quiet.” Stiles looked at him like he was Captain America and Captain Kirk and Captain Von Trapp rolled into one, until Derek hung his head, bashful.

“I know they are all safe - I know - but it can’t hurt for one person to be tracking, and making sure.”

The water was still gleaming on Stiles’ skin, and running down from his wet hair. Derek was aware of the curve of his hip, and the leanness of his thigh. Stiles saw him looking, and swung back and to one side, opening his body so that Derek could see all of him. A clear drop ran down his cheek, and dripped onto the sparse hair in the centre of Stiles’ chest. His nipples were hard and small and pink. Derek swallowed. He felt conscious of his own tongue in his mouth. The pattern of small dark moles on Stiles’ cheek was almost repeated low on his side, on his ribs and waist, just above the waistband of his sopping trunks. His treasure trail was visible too, thickening just as it disappeared under the material. He closed his eyes, because otherwise he would have been staring, trying to see if Stiles’ cock was stiffening too, now, under his cold wet shorts.

He wanted to look at his young man’s beautiful long legs and his feet as well, but just then a breeze rippled across the surface of the pond. The sweet scent of Stiles’ body and the clean water filled his senses. He wanted him so badly, to taste and kiss and touch his skin everywhere. It must have shown on his face, because when he gave up and looked, Stiles’ eyes went huge and dark, and he shifted as if his head had become almost too heavy to hold up.

“Go and put on something, please,” said Derek, almost in pain.

“Okay,” said Stiles understandingly, and he did, at once. Only his feet were bare when he came back and sat down. They hung down, white and pink, a little above the height of the water.

Derek was watching all the swimmers again, as his head cleared.

“I have to say something, and I have to tell you something,” said the Alpha.

“I’m listening,” said Stiles, quietly.

“When you turn eighteen, if you think we maybe won’t last for a long time, together I mean, I don’t want to start up at all. I will always, always want to be your friend, and I will always care about you, but I can’t - “

“Fool around?”

“That is exactly what I mean. Not with you.”

“I totally get it,” said Stiles. “And I know I don’t know anything about anything, and I am trying not to imagine it all the time, but we two are going to get so close, so much closer than we are now, even… we will both have to be careful, because parts of us will be growing into each other, roots and branches and vines and leaves, so if one of us decides to try to pull it all apart…” he shuddered. Derek was thinking of a thing that was maybe from the Bible: “There shall be such oneness between you, that if one cries, the other shall taste salt.”

They sat in silence a while, listening to the swimmers calling and laughing to each other.

“So what was the other thing? What did you have to tell me?”

“I can’t do it here. Can you come up after dinner? I have to tell you all about the fire in our old hunting lodge, and about what a mountain ash line is, and about - about two very bad people who attacked my family. I have to tell you all about my Dad and my brothers and a lot about Mom. And then I have to tell you about how that damaged us, and about my Uncle Peter and Laura. And I am fucking hopeless at talking.”

“I know you think of Laura all the time.”

“I needed her, Stiles. I know you understand. I needed her just to keep going, she was integral to my survival, and she was taken away from me.”

“Look, Derek,” and Stiles leaned forward. “Has Lydia gone quiet? Is that her over there?”

It was dusk, but with his superior vision, Derek could see that Lydia was smiling at the two of them talking so quietly. Seeing herself observed, she trod water faster and gave a cheery little wave. 

“Can’t you see her smiling at you?” Derek asked, getting up and pulling Stiles up to his feet. “I think the mermaids might be fine with you and me, now, by the way.”

“The mermaids better stop singing each to each, and get out of the pond,” said Stiles, “or they are going to be walking home in pitch blackness.”

He was right. It was almost dark when the party saw the welcoming lights of the home buildings at the farm. Scott had been guiding Lydia and Allison to make sure they didn’t tread on any roots or get hit by overhanging branches, and the other wolves had been whistling to each other and making sure there were no stragglers, or younger walkers getting too tired. Boyd had picked up one of the youngest of the dairy girls for a piggy-back, and she was clinging on and getting sleepy already.

Derek and Stiles let the others gradually draw ahead of them. Under the dark eaves of the Preserve, Derek propped Stiles against a tree trunk and braced him between his arms, and kissed him till he was too dizzy to speak or stand up. Then he held him gently, soft and cool and stirring, till Stiles was ready to go inside and face his dinner, his visitors, and Derek’s story. 

Stiles was patient. He listened in fits and starts till well after midnight, and then he said goodnight and went back to his little clean cupboard of a room at the Hall. Derek went alone to his big bed, till Scotty knocked and came in, a little troubled, wanting to lie back to back with his big Alpha and feel safe.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ONE LAST ONE TO GO! xxx  
> Dear readers, you may note that I have been working as much backwards, moving details back into the earlier chapters, as forwards, with the new ones. I think it all makes more sense now! Thanks for your indulgence towards my story. I am a Beta-less loner partly because I am so impatient to get work up!


	9. Birthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles' 18th birthday comes. And so does he, twice!  
> Also photos of the estate with their captions, that may explain a few details to any curious souls.

_[photo: Isaac Lahey, in half-shifted form, looking into the face of a black and white cow, sniffing its breath.] The Estate maintains a small herd of Holstein-Friesians, and a much larger flock of goats. The farm’s goat dairy produces commercial quantities of feta cheese, but the stated purpose of the cow dairy is to supply household needs. As with so many other things at Hale, it seems that the choice to run a milk-by-hand organic dairy (and its associated grass farming operation) stems more from doubts about the results of unethical treatment of animals in factory operations than from any financial consideration. General aesthetic preferences are certainly also involved._

_Here Isaac Lahey, whose primary responsibilities are in animal husbandry and welfare, uses his enhanced senses to examine a low-yield cow. Detailed veterinary examination by scent analysis, rather than by more intrusive methods, is only one of the many ways the stock at Hale benefit under werewolf management; another, when necessary, is the easing of pain by black-vein absorption techniques._

Stiles’ birthday fell on the same day as that of the lead Laundryman, Eddie Ling-Cargill. His staff had talked Cook and her team into theming the cake, so the message on top of the folded white layers - covered in old-fashioned desiccated coconut to look like a pile of clean towels - read “Happy 52nd Birthday to Ed L-C, Keepin’ it Clean for 13 Years at Hale! (Also to Stiles on his 18th!)” Eddie made a heartfelt speech which had quite a lot of information about surfactants in it, but which was really about how his staff’s willingness to experiment had helped him to improve the chemical footprint of the laundry. It was actually all rather touching because he was so passionate - and after he sat down, Stiles rose to cheers and blushed and stammered out “I have to thank Cook and Scotty and Ms McCall and the Alpha for helping me to find a new home here,” then sat down again with a bump, covering his face with his t-shirt while everyone applauded him thunderously for his three-second effort.

Perhaps almost every person in the room knew that he was going upstairs with Derek at the end of the dinner to be extensively meddled with, but they were all too respectful or too kind to say anything openly. The few good-humoured jokers at the table were effectively suppressed by those more sensitive souls sitting around them; a look at the Alpha’s intent face or at Stiles’ too-bright eyes was almost enough to quell teasing. As everyone stood and mingled at the end of the meal, lot of people patted Stiles on the back in various strange mixtures of congratulation, envy and consolation. He felt more and more like a bride. He started sorting dishes to be trolleyed out to the kitchen, but Cook stopped him and took the plates out of his hands.

“Not on your birthday, I don’t think.” She held his face and kissed him on either cheek. “You okay for a ten o’clock start tomorrow? I don’t care if we don’t see you till noon, you know, lunch is an easy one tomorrow!”

“Thanks, Cook, but just normal-ness is good,” said Stiles, trying to keep his shit together.

“Up to you, and decide whenever. And - I think scrambled eggs on Turkish and berry yoghurt and tea and OJ on a tray about 830 tomorrow should work, don’t you?”

“Don’t, Cook, don’t,” he said, and fell forwards into her strong arms for a comforting hug. As he pulled back he asked, “Audra, why didn’t you ask for the bite? You are practically a wolf anyway!”

“Oh, Stiles,” she said, shrugging something off, “I might ask yet! I’m only 48, you know. But I can already smell pretty well now.”

_[photo: Audra Reyes writing with chocolate icing on a cake, with her tongue poking out in concentration, in front of an old range stove.] Given the number of resident werewolves and bonded servants at Hale (fifty-two people at time of writing), heads of agricultural and service operations have considerable responsibility and are given wide latitude, under the oversight of the Factor._

And then Derek was standing next to them.

“Come up to the study for a birthday drink, Stiles, will you? Eddie is coming too.”

“Okay,” he said.

As they went up the stairs he was looking at Derek’s back moving under his shirt, at the way his hand ran up the bannister - almost as if he was reassuring it that it was needed.

In the study, Eddie and Derek took the two big chairs and Stiles sat on the matching foot-stool. Stiles couldn’t cope with the thought of alcohol, and just took a few sips of coke for the look of the thing. The older men chatted for a quarter-hour about sustainability stuff and about Eddie’s wife, Gai Lin, who had had a short hospital stay for a successful operation a week before, and had found the ordinary commercial food in the hospital almost inedible, after years of Estate produce. 

_[Photo: Leonard Jaroussky with rows of staked cherry tomatoes in a very large hothouse.] Agricultural specialists often take on a secondary service role at Hale; Len Jaroussky oversees a diversified hothouse production operation, including organic Hale Strawberries, but also acts as a footman when called upon to participate in formal house occasions.]_

Despite his evident pleasure in the Alpha’s invitation, as soon as Eddie found a polite opening, he shook hands with Derek and then with Stiles, and left. They were alone.

They looked at each other nervously. 

“I’m completely freaking out,” said Derek, starting to get the look about him that Cora referred to as “goofy”.

Stiles clumsily dragged his stool up close to Derek’s chair. “I can’t feel my hands properly.”

Derek took both of Stiles’ hands and held them, warming them, rubbing the backs with his thumbs. Stiles sighed and leaned forwards till their foreheads touched.

“Please don’t start kissing me in here, not tonight. I won’t be able to walk down the hall if you do.”

Derek could feel the moving air from Stiles’ lips against his own. “All right,” said Derek thickly, “so we have to get to my room right now. Don’t touch me, please, till we get inside and shut the door.” He pulled Stiles, swaying, to his feet, and then dropped his hands.

They walked silently along the hall, Derek aware of every contour of the space between them as if it were a solid object they were carrying.

When the door was closed, Derek pushed Stiles upright against it, and bent his head and touched their mouths together. Stiles’ mouth was soft, red, receptive, thirsty. Derek licked and bit and sucked at it, and held Stiles up by his shoulders. When he drew back, he pushed Stiles in the middle of his chest, slow and firm, and said, “You have to stand up by yourself for a minute, now.” He knelt and took off Stiles’ sneakers and socks, and unbuttoned the top and the fly of his jeans, knuckling very gently at his balls inside the soft cotton. Stiles made an astonished sound and his knees buckled. “Stand up for me. Don’t fall, Stiles,” said Derek sternly, and saw him fight to keep himself together. Derek helped him step out of his jeans, then took hold of the bottom of his white t-shirt and pulled it off over his head, stroking his arms as they fell loosely back to his sides.

“Do you want to see me?” asked Derek.

Stiles watched as Derek shucked his clothes methodically, not sure whether to try to make any kind of a show out of it. He doubted Stiles was capable of being amused at that moment. He smiled at him a little ruefully. “It’s just me, Stiles. We are in no hurry, are we?” Stiles made no answer, watching as Derek dropped his shirt and shorts in a little pile at the foot of the bed. He came back close to Stiles and took his face between his hands.

“Are you okay? Are you feeling sad tonight?”

“Not sad,” said Stiles, “just - I have to get used to your body.”

“No rush,” said Derek. “It’s okay to be overwhelmed by all this hotness.” Stiles tried to smile and couldn’t, so Derek kissed him again and caught him as his knees gave way. “I’m going to carry you and move you around now, so you can relax if you want.” 

He carried Stiles to the bed, and sat on the edge, then wriggled backwards with him in his arms, pulling him up so that Stiles’ back rested along his front where Derek half-reclined against the pillows. He arranged him carefully so that he could reach everything, and then turned Stiles’ face a little away from him with one hand on his jaw, so that Derek could lick and suck at his neck. Stiles’ lips fell open again. His breath audibly dragged in his throat.

“Lick my hand, Stiles. Wet it, so I can touch you.” He pushed his fingers into Stiles’ mouth and then let him lick wetly at his palm, tasting the salt. He spat a little into his hand as well, and reached down inside Stiles’ loose undershorts, caressing his full cock, starting to hold it more firmly, to move his hand along the length. It was already wet at the tip, and gliding the pad of his thumb over the head made Stiles cry out very quietly, rhythmically, and to shudder and clench and unclench his back and ass. 

“Is it good? Are you close?” whispered Derek right into Stiles’ ear, following the words with a few delicate licks.

He wasn’t close: he was there already, saying “oh, oh,” in amazement, coming in little white twists that mostly caught on the line of hair on his own flat belly, but in one case spattered up to his ribs. Derek waited till he stopped shaking, then moved him to lie on his back, propping up his head and shoulders with pillows, so he could see himself. Derek slid down beside him and licked up Stiles’ come from his pale skin. He put his sticky wet fingers in Stiles’ mouth for him to taste, and even kissed some of the come into back into his young man’s mouth, pulling back to look at his face, to see if it was pleasing him.

Then he slid back up to murmur into Stiles’ ear again. 

“Stiles, I should have asked you before, but everything went out of my head and I went stupid. I know what I want to do. Can I ask you about it? Can you - nod and shake your head for yes and no?”

Stiles opened his eyes a little more and gave a tiny nod.

“I can’t give you - anything, you know that, right?” Another nod.

“I - Stiles - I want to come on your face. Is that okay with you? In your mouth? Just to touch it, not to fuck your mouth or anything, not tonight, anyway. Does that sound all right?”

Stiles nodded and opened his lips. When Derek knelt up, with his knees on either side of Stiles’ chest, he looked at the Alpha, and put out his tongue, softly, to show his willingness.

Derek spat in his hand again and started to work his own cock, slipping faster and harder as he looked over the spellbound, serious face and offered neck of his young man. As he felt Derek’s pleasure rising, Stiles raised his hands to the backs of Derek’s thighs, holding on just tightly enough to let him know that they were together. 

The first line of come made Stiles flinch as it landed on his lip and cheek; the next few had him gasping apparently in pleasure as they landed. Then instinct took over and Derek found himself half-shifting, smelling everything, hearing everything just that little bit differently, that little bit more intensely, as he forced out the last drops.

_[photo: Derek Hale, Scott McCall, Vernon Boyd and Isaac Lahey doing synchronised sparring drill.] The Hale Pack is small but unified, perhaps because they are unusually close to each other in age. The Hales were a large family until eleven years ago, when a self-declared “activist”, Kate Argent, infiltrated the household as a bonded domestic. Apparently at the suggestion of her father, Gerard Argent, she trapped six members of the family including two young boys inside their historic hunting lodge in Beacon Hills Forest Preserve by supernatural means. Her first victim was Robert Bouchard, the human caretaker at the Lodge, who would have been able to break her barrier and free the Hales. Using a combination of accelerants, Argent burnt the structure to the ground, killing all those inside except for Peter Hale, who was trapped by a collapsing cement floor in a sub-basement, and suffered terrible burns and severe psychological trauma. Laura Hale became Alpha; she and Peter coexisted in suppressed conflict for several years on the Estate._

_[photo: Vernon Boyd, mechanic, eyes closed, with Betty Valens, dairy worker, looking to camera, standing balanced on Boyd’s shoulders, both smiling.] In the aftermath of the tragic fire, Peter Hale pressed for radical change on the Estate, arguing that human servants had proven criminally untrustworthy; Laura regarded the death of Bouchard as proof that the human caretaker would certainly have risked serious injury or death to save the family if the killer had left him alive. She stated many times that she saw the deaths of most of her family as predicated on the death of their loyal human servant._

“Oh!” said Stiles, opening his eyes to see Derek partly shifted, as he shuddered to a stop. He relaxed and his eyes went back from red to their usual pale green.

With a careful fingertip, he collected a line of come on one fingertip from Stiles’ cheek and pushed it tenderly into that patient mouth. He licked up a few white flecks from Stiles’ neck and softly touched them onto his waiting, cool tongue. Taking his time to see everything, he caught up every drop he could find, and pushed it lovingly in, always softly, always hinting and asking, never insisting. Stiles was moaning, now, really, his choked ‘ngh, nngh, nnghhh’ at every touch going straight to Derek’s half-softened cock. When Stiles’ face was wet but clean, Derek knelt up over him again and brushed the tender head against his proffered tongue and along the inside of Stiles’ lower lip. Stiles’ bottom lip was apparently the softest thing in the universe.

He looked down. Stiles still had his loose, come-dampened undershorts on. Derek shimmied them off, wiping up a little as he went, smiling, and tossed them into a corner. He drew up the sheet to cover them both. As he did it, Stiles was returning slowly to himself. He rolled in and put his lean thighs around Derek’s. He mouthed at the skin over Derek’s collarbone without urgency, just tasting and caressing, till he started to go relaxed again, drifting towards sleep.

The Alpha had no objections. He, too, felt sated enough to rest. 

_[heritage photo (Polaroid): young Derek and Laura Hale arm in arm, both serious-faced, some eye-flare partially obscuring Laura’s face, with farmhouse in background. ] Despite a near-complete physical recovery, perhaps as a consequence of trauma from the fire, Peter Hale became increasingly unstable, and eventually secretly murdered his niece Laura six years after her assumption of the Alpha role. He publicly claimed to have inherited his new power along family lines, and to be mystified as to why his nephew had not succeeded. During the long period while his role in Laura’s death was uncertain, Peter’s Alpha status put him in control of the Estate. When investigations by the local police brought the crime to light, young Derek Hale made the traditional choice to take responsibility for avenging his sister, and thus became Alpha._

In the middle of the night in his sleep, Derek felt Stiles’ breathing change. Stiles was lying on his stomach with his head turned away, dreaming, a little anxiously perhaps - it was hard to tell whether to wake him or not, till his heart rate spiked and he gasped. Derek touched his back and he started, waking at once. He put his hands over his eyes, and swallowed a few times, calming himself.

“Do you want to tell me?” Derek asked, wondering if it was a nightmare.

“Dad wanted to say something, but he couldn’t get through,” said Stiles. “I mean, it was just me dreaming, I know. I’m not crazy. And then this waterfall that we were near - it was sort of between us - there must have been a flood up river, because there was suddenly ten times as much water, and logs and things in the water, it was a bit scary, all that brown water, roaring over - but I don’t know if it was going to get worse or slow down or what…”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have woken you… maybe there was a point in there somewhere.” Derek rubbed his shoulder slowly. 

“It’s okay. Sometimes if they turn nasty, it’s really bad. I had them before, back at … my old home, and sometimes I couldn’t even explain what the dream was about - it would just be a feeling and I would scream and wake Dad up. Poor Daddy.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“I’m thirsty - is there anything close?” 

Derek reached over him, then uncapped the metal canteen he kept by the bed. “I should have made you drink before, actually.” He handed it to Stiles as he sat up to drink.

Stiles’ smile had questions in it. 

“What?” said Derek, smiling back.

“Do you mind that I go - sort of - passive?”

“You know what it is, right? How you are organized, for the moment, anyway? It doesn’t have to stay exactly the same, of course.”

“I don’t know that it is going to change much.”

“Well - if you don’t mind me saying so - we both have a lot to learn, probably.”

“Ah, technically, I think I have everything to learn!”

The Alpha laughed ruefully. “Jesus! You’re killing me, already, now.”

Stiles shifted in close to his side. “I know lots of people hardly ever do it, but do you think about fucking me - like my ass, - my anus, I mean? Honestly?”

“I’ve thought about it, yes. I love how your body is at the hips, how slight and strong you are, and I love your ass - it’s so beautiful - and I know I want to get my mouth on you there,” Stiles shivered, but didn’t interrupt - “but when I think about pushing inside you, I wonder how I will know if you are really feeling okay with it, or if your - the way you are - will mean you can’t tell me if you are really feeling it as pleasure or not. And - I am a little afraid of letting myself go, doing that. I don’t know how I might be, if you are totally submissive like you are, when I am fucking into your body. That side of you does call to something in me, Stiles. We have to tread carefully.”

“What do you think you might do?”

Derek shook his head, doubtfully. “Not give you the bite against your will or - really injure you - I can’t imagine doing that, though I have heard some terrible stories. But I might hurt you holding you down, or bruise you, or scare you, doing more than you were ready for.”

“I’m ready for anything, I think,” murmured Stiles, “and what’s a few bruises? Feeling you lose control because of me would be… extraordinary, Derek. I want that. I don’t want you always to be holding back while I am just - falling into the sea of it…” He went up on an elbow and kissed Derek’s shoulder and his face. 

_[Photo: G Stilinski, smiling, white shirt and grey pants, barefoot, sitting on a neat single bed in a narrow room with floorboards and a stone window frame. He has an old fashioned shutter button with a long cord in his hand for taking self-portraits.] Those who first come to the Estate through the agency of the banks or the government (older orphans, bankrupts, discharged veterans or in one or two cases, prisoners offered contracts as rewards for good behavior) can at first feel oppressed by their change in circumstances. However, they usually find they can make a genuine and valued contribution, and therefore a happy home for themselves at Hale. This is a single person’s quarters in the servants’ residence, officially known as Main Hall, but often called ‘Bouchard Hall’ amongst those who live there._

“All right, then,” said Derek, “Let’s start small tonight. Can I try you with my finger and see if it feels good? And maybe that won’t be too much, and you can talk to me.”

Stiles lay on his front, and pulled a pillow down under his belly so that his rear was slightly lifted. Derek kissed him on the back of his neck, and then proceeded slowly down his spine. Beside his tailbone there was a very slight dimple on either side.

“How can you have dimples here, Stiles? You’re like a whippet everywhere else!” He licked into them and then down the curve over the bone in the cleft.

“Should I - ?” Stiles turned to look anxiously behind him. “I showered before dinner, but if you want I can - oh JESUS, oh Derek, that feels - oh - oh!“ 

When he was satisfied that Stiles was floating, Derek patted him on one ass cheek and reached over to the drawer in the bedside table for supplies. After a few minutes, he asked quietly, “Can I?” and received a murmur of assent. He waited for Stiles’ breathing to slow again when he felt some slight physical resistance, kissing the top of his thigh and smoothing over the small of his back with his clean hand, but as soon as he moved again, he felt the tension return, all through that slim frame. Something needed to be different.

Derek coaxed Stiles onto his side, moving his pillows away, so that they lay face to face. “Come closer, here,” he said, and he put his hand on Stiles’ leg and lifted his thigh so it was over Derek’s waist. Stiles pressed his face into Derek’s neck and panted as he felt those big wet fingers stroking him again, and he curved himself a little to give him better access. This time when he felt the intrusion it was different, easier, and he could let go.

“Do you like it?” whispered Derek into his hair. Stiles’ hot mouth was open against the skin of his throat, but he made what felt like a pleasure-sound, so Derek pushed another finger slowly into that incredible soft warmth, even softer than his mouth. Stiles was sweetly into it now, pliant, helpless. Derek felt pre-come drip from his own cock. Sooner or later, Stiles would be fucking back onto him, he thought. “Can you tell me how you feel?” he asked tenderly, “and take your time, babe, no-one is hurrying you.” He pushed a little deeper and in, and Stiles gave a sort of sob against his neck, and relaxed further. Derek felt for the spot and stroked it till Stiles was almost shouting into his skin, over and over till he came again, convulsively. When Derek tentatively went to pull his fingers out, though, Stiles gripped his arm to stop him.

“Ask me again,” he murmured hoarsely, moving so that Derek could see his eyes.

“How do you feel?”

“Full,” said Stiles, “and safe.”

_[photo: Derek Hale, portrait by candlelight (long exposure), smiling and looking downward, clapboards behind his head; taken at Springville Estate] Under the liberal leadership of the current Alpha, the Hale Pack has started to rebuild its numbers, and the Estate has recently enjoyed several years of peaceful and commercially successful operations. Good working relationships have been established with the local community and other estates. At Hale, the closest possible harmonious relations exist between werewolves and humans._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! Any comments? Issues? American English errors? 29 000 words and 6000 hits and so far two people have written back to me... sigh... If you have a minute, do tell me what you did and didn't like, if you have a minute, guys! xx


	10. 18 Months Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little date stamp for 'Surviving' for the fans. xx

Stiles was rifling through his big bag looking for something, and getting increasingly annoyed with Derek, but forcing himself to keep his voice really low.

“I didn’t ask why YOU are here, Derek. It’s obvious that Ray is having some sort of alpha crisis, and I think it’s great that you came up here to check up on your friend. I just think it might have been less than sensitive, bringing me with you.”

“I showed you the letter!”

“Actually: you READ me PART of that letter. I haven’t even seen this Robbie yet - is he still here? or did he go already? Ray was less than clear.”

“Be patient, Stiles, he’s - he’s not doing too well.”

“No shit.”

“Don’t judge him.”

“I’m not. He is obviously depressed or anxious or something. And he’s not helping himself by trying to put his ‘everything is great’ face on, now that you are here to stop him from actually killing himself.”

Derek looked sick. “Do you think he - it’s not a good idea for a wolf to try a suicide. Oh shit. Poor Ray.” He sat down on a padded bench seat in front of a ladies’ dressing table with a mirror, and put his head in his hands.

Stiles sat on the bed. “Are you OK?”

Derek nodded into his hands. “I’m fine. It’s just - it must be so, so hard for him with his betas away all the time - he is the only one of his family left, and he’s not that old - he’s only a year older than me. And this is a good estate, but he needs more help - just more people. He needs a good factor, or a sister or something.”

“Derek - what did you you say to Ray about me? When you told him I was coming?”

“That I was bringing one of the young guys from Hale, that you were pretty sharp about Estate problems, and that you could maybe talk to Robbie and see what his deal was, for a start.”

“So…” Stiles was frowning pretty hard. “So you didn’t tell Ray that I was your partner?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Oh Derek, that’s bad. Tell me: could Ray have never heard about me at all? Could he possibly have thought that one outcome of this visit might be that the two of you would be fucking?”

“What?! No. I - I don’t think so! I mean … he and I were just kids!”

“Oh my GOD Derek! You IDIOT!”

“Shhh Stiles, he’ll hear you!”

“Oh babe,” whispered Stiles, next to his ear, “I am sorry, I am really sorry, but you told the loneliest guy in the world that his childhood sweetheart was coming -“

“It wasn’t like that!”

“Were you pals? Went hunting and swimming together? Talked about girls and how gross they were? Then one day you did a little kissing practice? And then the next year, maybe you both had boners?”

“Don’t. Don’t make fun of it.”

“So it was for real then!”

“NO! We were pretty close - but it wasn’t like - an affair, or something! We were fourteen! I had weird teeth and knobbly knees!”

“You’ve still got weird teeth, and I’m happy enough to overlook it. I bet at the time - in the moment, anyway - it was plenty serious. So you were coming up here and he was probably thinking, ‘Finally, someone who cares about me is coming and I can ask him to sleep in with me, one wolf to another, and for once I won’t be sleeping alone, and he is also kind of a lonely guy like me, and maybe he likes me a little still and there will be someone to take away this terrible terrible feeling -‘ “

“Do you really think -“

“Yeah, I do. I think I got out of the car and he took one look at the way we walked towards him together, or something, and suddenly this visit went from the only thing he had to look forward to, to flat out torture for him, because I think he respects you AND he has feelings for you. And that’s why he seemed kind of confused - because he was in shock.”

“Fuck, Stiles. I had no - I just wasn’t thinking about that at all. Not consciously anyway.”

Stiles looked at him interrogatively. “Not consciously? What does that mean?”

Derek was getting his ‘hunted’ look. “It’s been a while. We have to go out there.” The glare he got back meant, so so clearly, that Stiles was only sticking a pin in the fight, and that he fully intended to return to it later. 

When they went out, Ray was in the loungeroom building up the fire. He had changed into clean jeans, and a green long-sleeved tee. He was down on his haunches, leaning forward, poking some extra broken wood into the middle. The room smelled divine.

“Is that hickory?” asked Stiles, smiling. 

“Good nose you have there,” said Ray grinning and twisting round. Stiles came and sat on a low chair near the fire and looked into it. Ray’s cook came in with some beers on a tray for them. “You happy with beers, guys?” she called from the door, and when they all nodded politely, she left them on a side table and ducked back out to the kitchen. Derek brought two over to the fireplace.

“So, Ray, “ said Stiles, “I think maybe I’ve screwed things up a little here.”

“How so?” asked Ray, the fire shining off his blond hair. Like practically every other born wolf Stiles had ever seen, he was a rather spectacular man, taller than Stiles, leggy and fair. 

Derek knew there was no point even attempting to stop Stiles doing whatever he was going to do. He sat down heavily on a dining chair on the other side of the room and started drinking his beer as fast as possible.

“I think I should have made sure that you knew that Derek and I were together, before I came with him. Derek wasn’t being inconsiderate, he was just worried for you - he could see you maybe needed to see a friendly face, but I think I was a bit of a shock to you, and I am sorry for that.”

“No, no,” said Ray, “It is lovely to meet you, Stiles, it really is.”

“Well, it’s lovely to meet you too, Ray, and I hope later on you will tell me a little about Derek and the rest of the Hales back in the day when you used to visit.”

Derek looked stricken. He stood up but stayed silent.

“So: your betas are away studying? Are they all the same age?”

“- ish,” said Ray. “Dave and Andy are 20 - they’re twins, you know. My dad gave them the bite at 13. Andy had leukaemia, so that was a health thing, but they were used to doing stuff together, and Dave came to ask too. And they have lived here since they were 16. And Su Lin is 19. She’s awesome, she’s in pre-med at Stanford. The guys are at NorthWestern, doing agriculture. I am so proud of them.”

“It’s unusual on an estate, to have so many scholars.”

“Yeah. It was down to my parents, really. They put a lot of stress on school.”

“Did any of your indentured people do it?”

“Everyone got a high school diploma, at least,” he said, “And Annie’s son Franklin goes into the community college up in Lambert a few days a week. But there’s only Annie, Franklin, Robbie, old Paul in the stables, and me here now. And Robbie is working in town for a little while, for the lady who runs the movie house, while she is recovering from an operation. He should be home late.”

“It feels empty to you.”

Ray took a pull of his beer. “They’ll be back at the beginning of July. It’s far to travel, though.”

“Sure.”

“Robbie can’t stand it here. He says he’ll never get married if he stays on the place til he’s thirty.”

“He might never get married if he leaves, either.”

Ray laughed shortly. “He’d have better odds somewhere else, maybe - but he still has four years on his contract. He says he regrets the sale. He wanted to get free of credit card debts and a student loan - but the farm makes him - he says the hills make him depressed. He likes the alpacas all right, he’s a good worker - but he hates working with the bunnies. He’s not a good shearer. He gets nervous and then they make him even more nervous and then he makes mistakes and he just hates it and can’t do it.”

“Do the rabbits let wolves shear them?”

“They like me and Su better than Annie and Frank, would you believe? But they love Paul. He’s the gun shearer on Angoras. Never nicks a bunny.”

“So about Robbie - would you do an exchange with someone from another estate for part of the four years? Might Robbie accept that?”

“God. Yes. If there were more people, or it was a warmer place - if anyone wanted to exchange with him - do you think anyone at Hale would want to?”

Derek stepped forward anxiously. 

“Don’t restrict yourself to Hale in your thinking, Ray,” said Stiles. “You should make an open offer. People have lots of reasons for wanting to change where they live and work. And in working it out, you could make some new contacts for the business. I’ll help you write to the big estates and to some city pack conclaves. And I’ll talk to Robbie, even if I have to go in and sit with him in the projectionist’s booth. Or usher for him or something. Or make the popcorn!”

“Thank you, Stiles. I guess people do that - do they? Exchanges? Have you ever taken an exchange on an indenture, Derek?”

“No, but I send the betas out on swaps or on short loans all the time. For work experience, you know. And what Stiles said - build up the network.”

“Good,” said Stiles, “let’s talk about the other thing after dinner.”

“What’s the other thing?” said Ray, a little bewildered.

“The other thing is you, Ray, and how fucking miserable and lonely you are.”

“I love it here.”

“Third time you have told me that today. We got here at noon.”

“Do you think I don’t love my home?” said Ray, starting to get upset.

Stiles shook his head. “I think you love it, BUT.”

“But WHAT?” asked Ray, bewildered.

“Well, we’ll talk about that after I have eaten three serves of Annie’s chili - am I right Annie?”

Annie was walking in the door with a big orange enamelled cast-iron dish on a tray, grinning. 

“Hell yes, Mr Hale.”

“Oh,” he said, moving the wooden board closer to the edge of the table, “We aren’t married. My other name is Stilinski. And I’m not Mr anything. Nice Le Creuset, by the way.”

“We don’t waste money here at Dampier, but my lord prefers to get the best and treat it right, so everything lasts.”

“I am sure I could learn a lot in your kitchen - would you mind if I sous-chef’ed for you tomorrow night? I am new to the kitchens, really.”

“If you want to, sure,” said Annie, beaming as Franklin brought in a huge tray with bowls of salad and bread. Then Annie served, with the wolves and Stiles passing plates around so that she could stand still and wield her ladle. The custom of the house was obviously for the diners to help themselves to the sides, and Frank brought wine and showed it politely to Ray and to Derek before pouring. 

After Annie and Frank slipped out, there was quiet for a while as they all ate.

Ray finished his glass of wine, put his knife and fork down and then turned to Stiles. 

“I can’t talk about any of it tonight. I don’t want to be - can I just enjoy having you and Derek here to talk to? I see that you want to get right to it, because you are smart and you care for me because I am Derek’s friend, I do see that, but can we - I don’t know - just play cards, or something?”

“Sure,” said Stiles accomodatingly. “Of course. Are you any good at card games? You can teach me how to play something!”

Derek snorted derisively. “As I hope you could tell by those masterful evasions, Ray, Stiles is totally full of shit.”

“Derek!” he wailed.

“No one will play with him for money any more at home. That was the setup, right there.”

Ray was laughing. “ ‘so, Alpha, is this a good hand in - did you call this game poker?’”

When it was bedtime, Stiles curled up very close to Derek’s side, and lay very still for a while. Derek knew all too well that he wasn’t asleep.

“How would we know if Ray had tried to kill himself before today?”

“He hasn’t. It couldn’t be kept quiet. It would have gotten extremely messy if he had tried and failed.”

“Is this business viable?”

“I think so. It’s just running at half-strength.”

“Would anyone invest in it?”

“Maybe. I reckon he could get a bank loan to get a couple more people out here.”

“OK.”

“Stiles?”

“What?”

“I didn’t want to come up here without you. I didn’t ask myself why not - but now I think I know.”

“You were afraid you would end up in bed with Ray, and then you would feel you had betrayed me.”

“Maybe. Or that he would ask, and I would say no because of you, and then he would feel even worse.”

“Well, then.”

“Are you mad?”

“Nope.”

“Stiles?”

“Yep?”

“Do you think Ray is nice-looking?”

“Derek, Derek, Derek,” murmured Stiles very very low, “You are a dirty, filthy, bad, wicked dog and I should totally cut you off for a month for even thinking what you are thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything.”

“You are too, you manipulative, plotting, scheming, kinky pervert.”

“I’m not! I wasn’t thinking - I’m not thinking - anything.”

“You are a terrible person, Derek, so you had better tell me now: exactly WHAT have you been NOT THINKING all along since the moment you got that letter from your hot old boyfriend?” And Stiles bit Derek hard on the ear-lobe, hard enough that it really hurt for a second.

“I’m not thinking anything!”

“Ohhh I seeee,” said Stiles. “A complete blank in there, nothing but innocent folded laundry and fluffy clouds and little white lambs. I get it.”

“Yeah, so quit it.”

“So now I know you are a pervert AND a great big coward. You suck, Derek.” And Stiles rolled away.

“I didn’t PLOT anything, I really didn’t.”

“If you tell me all about what it is that you DIDN’T plot, I might forgive you.”

“I didn’t even plan - I hadn’t thought - well, I know what you are thinking now, anyway.”

“Do tell! What is it that is in MY mind that never crossed YOURS for a moment!”

“You thought - “ And Derek started to smile, involuntarily.

“It’s not funny!”

“You thought I might want you to cure Ray’s broken soul with your - “ Derek was cracking up - “with your magic penis!” and then he giggled and stuffed his fist in his mouth to smother it.

Stiles was kind of smiling as he rolled his eyes. “You really are a fuckwit, Derek, you know this.”

“I love you,” Derek said, for the first time ever when he wasn’t coming, and meaning it.

“Don’t you fucking DARE!” hissed Stiles. “Ugh. I am going to VOMIT on you. Don’t push me.”

“No, really, though.”

Suddenly Stiles rolled back in and bit hard on that ear again. Derek winced. 

“You are not going to put pressure on me to have a threeway with you and Ray, do you hear me? Not one gram of pressure. Not a look, not a hint, you got it?”

“No, no. Sorry.”

“Derek - I am afraid you aren’t listening. I’m not sure I want to do that, OK? Do you understand me?”

And now Derek was deadly serious. “I understand. I’m so sorry - Stiles, I was just being an asshole, please don’t be really mad at me!” he whispered. “And you already knew I - you know.”

“Go to sleep, Derek.”

“Does that mean we’re OK?”

“It means my magic penis is sleepy, you giant jackass.”

And Derek bit his hand to stop himself giggling, and lay there till Stiles was asleep.

\---------------------------------------------------------------

The next morning, Stiles asked Robbie if he could go into town with him.

“If you don’t mind giving me a lift, that would be awesome.”

“There’s not much for you to do in town,” said Robbie nervously, and I don’t finish til late at the movie house.”

“I got some marketing to do,” said Annie, from the other end of the table, “so I can bring you home around two, if you want, Stiles.”

Robbie was happy enough to talk in his truck. “It was OK when the boys were around, and Su,” he said, “but the last two years - it’s been pretty lonesome for me up there. Annie and Franklin are nice, but I think Franklin thinks I’m an idiot because I can’t cope with the bunnies. Old Paul is a good guy but he doesn’t talk.”

“How old do you think he was when they started calling him ‘Old Paul’?” asked Stiles, grinning.

“About twelve, probably,” said Robbie. “It’s my own fault, you know. I made some stupid choices and got into debt, and I just couldn’t see another way out. Was that what it was for you?”

“My contract should never have been on the market. I was orphaned and the bank put me up to cover the mortgage. I wasn’t really conscious when the decision was made. My father was killed in the line of duty.”

“And Derek insists on your honouring your contract?”

“Well,” said Stiles, “I don’t know. No, I think. He thinks the sale was legal but not really ethical, I guess. But it’s different for me. I have nothing much to go back to, and I love it at Hale, and obviously…”

“You and Derek are together, right?” said Robbie.

“There’s that,” said Stiles, “but also I like the work. I cook a little and I take photos and I help new people settle in if they come. And I feed these big dumb dogs we just got, these Hungarian Komondors. They don’t mind werewolves and they are really cute. I love them. We are going to be breeding them commercially now.”

“I like the alpacas, they are really fun, but they don’t need that much looking after. It’s mainly the rabbits.”

“You don’t think they’re cute?”

“It’s not that - it’s that I hate shearing them. It seems kind of cruel to me - although the bunnies don’t seem that scared of it. I can’t work out why. And I hate telling people I work with angora rabbits - you can see them thinking, ‘bastard’ even though Ray would never, ever tolerate the methods you see on videos, the way they were pulling the hair in China. Ray has a lot of empathy for the animals. He thinks they kind of like being shorn.”

“Do you feel Ray is a good guy? A good alpha?”

“He is a good guy, definitely,” said Robbie. “It’s not Ray’s fault.”

“Buuuut…” prompted Stiles.

“It’s depressing as fuck on that farm, Stiles, don’t tell me you don’t feel it. It’s not good for wolves to have no pack around them - he goes to skype them every other night and then changes his mind in case he is annoying them. I’ve said to him, when he looked sad, ‘you know you oughta skype the boys tonight,’ and do you know what he said?”

“What?”  
“ ‘They probably have more important things to do.’ So is what we are doing on his own estate not important? I mean he hardly even talks to me, some weeks. He never tells you you are doing anything right - or even wrong - I caught him redoing some ropes I thought I had wound up right, and he looked guilty. I said to him, ‘if I do something wrong you can just tell me, Ray,’ and he said, ‘I didn’t want to pick on you over nothing,’ and he just kept rewinding them himself, like I wasn’t there.”

“He wrote to Derek, because he was so upset about you wanting to leave.”

“Really?”

“Road!” yelped Stiles.

“Sorry,” said Robbie, “Although we’d have to be unlucky out here. I wasn’t sure he didn’t want to be rid of me.”

“He said in the letter that you were a hard worker and a good person, and when you asked to be released from your contract he felt utter despair.”

“Shit.”

“He had no idea you were unhappy. He said he thought everyone was getting on well.”

“We don’t fight or anything. I think the others are happy enough, probably. But you don’t know what it’s like to not have a real friend near you for two years. There have been times I thought I was losing my mind.”

“I know about loneliness. But why aren’t you better friends with Ray?”

“Since the betas went, I am not sure he knows I am alive. Why do you even think he wants to be friends with me?”

“I think you seem like a nice enough guy - don’t mention it - and I think he is a good man and someone who really needs a friend. I think if you said to him, play gin rummy with me on Sunday afternoon because I feel sad and I need to be around my alpha, I think he would probably cry with gratitude.”

“Do you feel a pull to Derek as your alpha, then? Even though you aren’t one of them?”

Stiles shrugged. “I think so. He took total responsibility for me practically from the beginning - not like an employer, I mean, like - the captain of a ship, or something - and I was out of it to start with, I was in shock and not eating … and I guess he made himself my alpha by caring about me. And I know Ray cares about your happiness.”

They had reached the little parking lot for the cinema. 

“I feel like a bit of a shit now,” said Robbie. 

“Don’t,” said Stiles. “I don’t think you did anything wrong, Robbie. You were right to say something if you were so down. Anyway, I think I might have a bit of a plan forming.”

“Stiles - don’t say anything else to Ray about me wanting to leave, for now, OK?” he said, anxiously. “I mean, I knew he wouldn’t be thrilled about it, but …”

“What about if we could organise a regular rotation off Dampier Estate for you, Rob? So that you could have a spell away, and then come home?”

“I do have a real job up there, you know. Especially when the boys are away, I think Ray needs another person, even if it’s not me. This job at the cinema - well it’s a little cash in hand for the Estate, and I can still do a lot of my stuff in the mornings.”

“I’d be thinking about some form of an exchange. Anyway. No rush.”

“Hey. Thanks for - thanks for taking an interest, I guess. ”

“I’ll keep thinking. And now - any chance of getting a free popcorn?”

“It’s 10 am!”

“Sorry, what’s your point?”

\------------------------------------

When Stiles hiked up to the top paddock at 230 to take the alphas some coffee, they both were leaning on mattocks, eyeing a big old stump that took about 20 square feet out of the ploughable area of a field. There was a big sharp axe and a nice little hatchet thrown on the grass.

“I’ve wanted to root that old bastard for years,” said Ray. “It’s really in an annoying place.”

“We can dig it out,” said Derek, almost hungrily. “Shame we didn’t bring a big crowbar, though.”

“We can chop it up for firewood pretty quick,” said Ray, preparing to take his shirt off.

“Hey, hey, hey,” said Stiles. “Why are we thinking about digging out this stump again?”

“It’s awkward to get around on the tractor,” said Ray, “and it’s an ugly old thing, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” said Stiles, looking at the massive old trunk. “Was it an oak?”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Ray.

“Can you remember it as a living tree, Ray?” Stiles was looking around the spreading roots.

“I don’t know. It was hit by lightning, I know. I think my father chopped it down because it was all weak and burnt and it might have crashed down anytime.”

“It’ll be fun,” said Derek, sensing resistance.

“It’ll be fun FOR YOU,” said Stiles. “When you’ve levered it up so its poor old roots are up in the sky, all black and bare, and suddenly there is a gaping hole in Ray’s field where there used to be this big thing - I just don’t know how he will feel about it.”

“I’ve started to kind of hate this stump, to be honest,” said Ray. 

Derek rolled his eyes. The fun afternoon of digging out that thing and getting all sweaty and hot and really feeling some work in his muscles was fading from view.

“OK, why?”

“You know. It’s ugly. It is just stuck here doing nothing.” He kicked it a little. “I don’t know why Dad never dug it out and finished the job.”

Stiles scrambled up on top of the stump which was at least a yard in diameter. He looked over the field to the opposite hill, where the farmhouse was. He had a lovely view of the house, which had some attractive stands of firs around it, and looked neat and home-like. He looked down at the roughish surface of the stump, and then carefully at the ground all around it. On one side there was a little hollow; there was a also a rough dent in one part of the top on the uphill side where a little cup of rainwater had accumulated. He beckoned to Ray and held a hand out. 

“Hop up here, will you?”

Ray took his hand and stepped up. Derek came and stood beside the stump, looking back westward towards the house.

“I can see two reasons why your dad left this stump here. Can you see them?”

Ray shook his head, somber.

“I think he liked to sit up here and look back at the house at sunset. It’s a nice angle on your place. And the other thing is - and I am shit at nature, really, I can’t see traces of things or identify smells or hear little scratchings or whatever - animals and other things live in stumps, around them, near them. They eat the wood, they use it as backing and - what’s that word - like shoring-up - for their burrows and whatnot. Or insects eat the wood of the little roots and the spaces become branches of little burrows. And I bet something flies in here to drink that water.”

“Mosquitos, probably,” said Derek. “What’s with you and stumps? You hate that big one in the woods at home!”

“Because it’s all uprooted and wrong, and it looks tortured and creepy and unhappy,” said Stiles. “But…”

“What?” asked Ray and Derek together.

“Well - Ray - did you hate this stump when your Dad was alive?”

“Never thought about it.”

“When did you start to dislike it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think.”

“I was trying to put in furrows for lettuces last year, I guess, and I was thinking how fucking awkward it was, how it was messing up the field.”

“I think ‘awkward’ is a weird word to use about a stump,” said Stiles.

“You’re nuts,” said Ray, “You think I think the stump is me.”

Stiles looked at him. “What do you think you will feel like after you and your lumberjack pal here have pried it out of the ground and chopped it up? Picture it.”

“Nothing. Hot and sweaty, probably,” said Ray to Derek, grinning.

“And when you start burning it? And looking up from the front of the house and it’s gone, just a dip in the ground for a while, then after years, nothing?”

“Well - .” Ray jumped down and kicked the stump again. “Before I found out that it was some sort of weird-ass symbol of my being awkward and stuck in the ground here, I think I would have remembered hacking out this stupid stump with Derek and having a fun afternoon.”

“OK, “ said Stiles. “How big is the wood behind me?”

“About five miles to the other side.”

“Great. So this is what I want. I want you and Derek to shift and go for a nice run together for about two hours - you can race to the other side of the wood via whatever the scenic bits are - and I am going to lie in the sun over there and have a nap. When you get back, I want you both to tiptoe up and put your ears to the stump and see if there are any familes of mice or groundhogs or I don’t know, stoats and shit, that you can hear moving around the base. They will all be cowering and holding their breaths now, I guess, after the kicking. And then I want you to sit on the stump and look back at the house, and then decide whether to dig it out.”

Ray looked, for lack of a better word, stumped.

Derek was already taking off his shirt. “Just do it, Ray,” he said, with a look of long-suffering patience, “don’t try and argue with him. Let’s run, and then if we are really lucky and we aren’t putting out a family of - STOATS - because we live in WIND IN THE WILLOWS - we might still get to rip that stupid fucking stump out before sunset.”

Stiles did indeed lie down on the grass, but not for long. After a few minutes he got up, and hefted the big axe thoughtfully, and traced a few shallow marks on the outside of the tree with its sharp edge. 

Off in the woods, the two wolves looked at each other in puzzlement when they heard infrequent but regular blows from a distant axe. As they were equally baffled, it wasn’t worth shifting back to discuss it, so they kept loping along. The loud blows stopped after a few minutes and only distant chipping and tapping was occasionally perceptible on the breeze. 

When they got back, Stiles was lying on the grass again. They went to listen to the side of the stump. There were some suggestive little noises being conducted through the wood. Some little things lived close by. Derek thought maybe he could smell wild rabbits. 

“Look,” said Ray. The idea of a rough seat had been hacked out of the wood, facing back to the house. It was almost like a throne, with the uncut sides of the wood as arm rests, but the seat was uneven. 

“You might need a cushion, sorry,” said Stiles, “I really needed different tools. And that wood was hard as rock.” His palms were red when he held them up to show.

“Give us that hatchet, then,” said Derek, and in about three minutes he had deepened the seat a little and levelled it, and improved the sides.

“That’s better,” said Stiles approvingly. “I’m fucking hopeless with an axe, aren’t I? Try it.”

Ray sat down and put his arms on the sides. He looked back over the estate to the house, where the windows were just starting to glow against the darkening hill.

Stiles clambered up and sat cross-legged behind Ray’s head. He put his bony hands on either side of Ray’s head, and moved it so it was resting against his shin. “There you go,” he said, as the wolf started to relax after his initial flinch of surprise at being touched, “you’re okay, I think.” Ray closed his eyes and the tension started to drain out of him. Stiles looked at Derek cautioningly, then leant forward and moved his hands down to the back and sides of Ray’s neck. “You’re right, I think,” Stiles murmured, “you really do love it here. You aren’t happy though, as things are, are you?”

Ray didn’t open his eyes. 

“You should ask Robbie if he wants the bite, maybe.”

Ray’s eyes shot open and Derek stepped forward. Stiles rolled his eyes.

“It’s just an idea, a thing to consider. I think he’s unhappy partly because he feels excluded, like you don’t care about him, which I think you do, Ray, and also, you could do with another wolf, so you won’t be pining yourself sick all the time.”

“He’s pretty old for the bite,” said Derek anxiously. “Stiles - some people die if it doesn’t take, don’t forget.”

“People die from all kinds of stupid things,” said Stiles, from personal knowledge. “And maybe even asking will be enough. He thinks you’re a good guy, Ray, but you hurt his feelings because you don’t invest in him. And if he’s a terrible shearer, start a super boutique line of that molt-comb fibre and send it to that chick with the youtube videos of her plucking her bunny and the bunny is all thrilled that someone is looking after him and glowing. She can’t possibly get enough fibre by doing that to satisfy her demand.”

“I know who you mean,” said Ray. 

“And then Robbie could be like, ‘we use a mixture of humane seasonal shearing and molted fur hand-harvesting to ensure that Dampier is cruelty free’ when he tells people what you guys do. Get t-shirts made, whatever. And don’t tell him the farm isn’t important, ever. And skype your betas every second night - alternate.”

“They are busy with studying,” said Ray, apologetically.

“Too busy to want to talk to their Alpha?” said Derek. “What are you talking about?”

“I do skype them! I tried on Sunday! Su said she had an exam the next day and I could see she was trying not to offend me - she was upset!”

“Ray,” said Stiles, resting his chin on top of the wolf’s head, “She was upset because she had an exam, or because she had something else that she needed to share with you, and you didn’t get her to tell you. You can push a lot harder. They need you. Don’t go quiet on them. Tell them you miss them, miss their touch and their scent.”

That was too much for Ray. A tear rolled down his face. Derek came and stood close to him. 

“I want them to … I don’t want to be ruining their lives, making them small stupid people. They are smart. They can’t stay on this farm forever, can they?”

“Ray - have you ever been to visit the boys, or Sue?”

“I helped them move.”

“No. Listen: find a quietish week, sort your guys out here, and go, I’m begging you. The looks on their faces - they are going to go ape shit when they smell you coming. They’ll love it. I see Scott when Derek comes back from a trip - he looks like he’s going to have a heart attack from happiness.”

“I think you need someone, too,” said Derek. 

“Oh, Jesus,” said Stiles.

“No,” said Derek obscurely, “he - Ray - if he could just find - “

Ray recoiled and stood up. “I can’t take it,” and started to walk down the hill towards the house. Stiles shook his head at Derek and went after Ray. He caught up with him under the trees at the bottom, and caught his sleeve.

“Don’t be mad at him,” said Stiles. “He is still so surprised by being happy himself that he wants to recommend it to everyone. And he sees it as possible for you, suddenly, because it turned out to be possible for him.”

“I’m not mad at him,” said Ray. “It’s just - last week - I guess I was kind of thinking - not as a permanent thing, but -“

“Of course you were. Why the fuck not, if I wasn’t in the picture?”

“Just to have someone there, almost, not just -“

“Hey, Ray?” Stiles pulled on Ray’s other sleeve, as Derek came up, carrying the coffee things. “Listen. Will it make you sadder, later, do you think, if we come in with you tonight?”

Ray stared, till Stiles started to blush. “How do you mean?” he asked starkly.

“What would you like, really?” asked Stiles in return. “I think Derek might quite like it if you wanted to - well - if you were a bit interested in me.” Ray shot a look at Derek, who couldn’t even hold his gaze.

“Do you share him with your pack at home?” asked Ray, looking a bit shocked.

“God no,” said Derek quickly. “Nope. It’s not like a - thing - we do. Have done. We haven’t done that.”

Stiles turned to Derek, amused. “You are allowed to change your mind, if you think it’s not a good idea, now, you know.”

“No, no, I’d be OK with it, if he wants to, and of course if you want to, Stiles.” Derek looked at Ray carefully. “I trust you, Ray, and I know you know how careful we would have to be.”

“I get it,” said Ray. He picked up Stiles’ hand, and ran his thumb consideringly across the blue and white skin of his thin wrist. “Strong, but also fragile,” he said, smiling, shy.

“We have to get back, anyway,” said Stiles, looking at the lengthening shadows. “I am going to sous- for Annie tonight, so I need to get in there if I am going to be of any use at all. We can talk after we have a little drink after dinner, and nobody has to decide anything in advance. If you are happy to have a little warmth and company tonight just for sleeping, we can leave it at that. I am used to the wolves sneaking in to curl up if they want to. That’s all good.”

“OK,” said Ray. He saw Derek swallow. He could smell the intensity of his old friend's interest, and Derek's cheeks were blazing. 

Stiles just rolled his eyes and strode off, shaking his head.

\-----------------------------------------------

After dinner, Stiles came in with his own plate and dessert on a tray, and picked at both plates as he sat on the couch leaning on Derek. “That is a nice kitchen down there, Ray,” he said, around a little mouthful. “And Annie is pretty impressive. She’s great on economy - there’s no waste.”

“You don’t seem very hungry,” said Ray. 

“I’m not,” said Stiles. “Partly it’s because I was tasting for Annie, and partly - I guess I’m nervous.”

“What do you want to do, then, Stiles, if I can ask?”

“I want a shower, please. It’s been a long day.”

“Sure. But don’t use bodywash or anything with a strong scent, if you don’t mind. It gets kind of overwhelming at night.”

“He knows,” said Derek heavily, standing up and carefully pulling Stiles to his feet. “We can come to yours when we are ready.”

Ray held out his hand and Stiles took it. Then he stepped in close, and after a quick look to Derek, he bent his head and put his face against Stiles’ neck. Stiles shuddered and Derek took him carefully by the shoulders, thinking he would help to hold him up, as Ray drank in his scent and tasted his skin. But Stiles didn’t relax quite the way Derek expected. He threw his arm around Ray’s neck and clung on. After a minute, Ray lifted his head and stared at Stiles, panting.

“OK, then,” said Ray, the pupils of his eyes huge.

“OK,” said Stiles, grinning.

\-----------------------------------

Whatever Derek had vaguely had in his mind, this was not it. 

Stiles had dragged an armchair up to the corner of the pallet at the foot of Ray’s bed, and pushed on Derek’s chest until he sat down in it with a thump. Then he had knelt up on the bed and peeled out of his shirt. Ray was shaking as Stiles pulled him close and kissed his face and his mouth, murmuring reassuringly. Ray went where he was put; he took his cock out of his pants on command, put his hands into Stiles’ hair as instructed, staying very quiet until Stiles shimmied up, and kissed him hard, and said into his open mouth, “You don’t have to hold it all in, Ray, tell me, show me if you like it.” And then Ray gave in and went with it completely, gasping and coming in what looked like agony down Stiles’ moving throat, then kneeling at the foot of the bed, resting his head on Stiles’ white thigh, while those thin, dry hands caressed his arms, his neck and his back until he was totally relaxed, aware, warm, almost unable to move, overwhelmed by touch and affection and approval and permission. Then Derek moved - at a signal from Stiles - and helped Ray up onto the bed, putting all the pillows behind his head and neck so he could lie there and watch through his eyelashes as Derek lay between Stiles’ legs and sucked him, so long, so softly and gently, wet and careful, until Stiles reached for Ray and kissed him and panted into his mouth as Derek brought him over. 

“Shall I…?” said Ray, asking Stiles’ permission, but evidently Derek’s lover had a mean streak, because he shook his head, and pulled on Derek’s shoulder until his wolf came up and lay behind him, and started carefully rubbing Stiles’ back, where he lay sprawled half-over their host. “He’s all right, aren’t you, D?” he murmured, actually dropping off to sleep, leaving Ray and Derek to look incredulously at each other and then to compose themselves obediently to rest.

In the middle of the night Derek woke up when he felt the small movements that probably meant Stiles was going into a nightmare. He spoke quietly into his ear to pull Stiles out of it before it could get bad, but there were already tears on his cheeks, so he turned him round and woke him all the way. Stiles clung to him, very silent. Ray was awake at once, but stayed quiet and watchful. 

“Anything I can do?” asked Derek, into his skin.

“It’s nothing,” said Stiles, “sorry.” He reached behind him for Ray, who slid over to line his back and gently pet his flank, half-relieved that he wasn’t in trouble.

“Did you have a bad dream, Stiles?” he asked. “Do you want a drink?”

“In a minute,” said Stiles. “I just need a minute,” and they held him till he sighed and stretched. He flopped onto his back and said, “Yeah, I am high-maintenance, aren’t I? Poor Derek.”

Derek nudged him in the ribs. “As you aren’t my property, I don’t ‘maintain’ you at all. And everyone needs looking after.”

“Do you have the same dream over and over?” asked Ray. “Or is it all different ones?”

“I had a black patch two years ago,” said Stiles, taking hold of Derek’s hand, “and sometimes I dip back down for a moment. And sometimes I dream of my dad - and even sometimes of my mom - and even if they are good dreams - well then it’s hard waking up. Don’t you dream, Ray?”

“Not much, that I remember.”

And the three of them lay there, talking quietly for a long time in the dark bedroom, warm, tranquil and happy.

_______________________

The next day, as they drove home, Derek said, “You were really different with Ray.”

Stiles cheerfully unwrapped a hard candy and popped it in Derek’s mouth so he didn’t have to take his hands off the wheel. 

“Did you know you were going to be that different?” Derek attempted to ask, except around the candy, so it came out ridiculously muffled.

“I am nineteen and a half years old, Derek,” said Stiles, looking out the window at the trees, and obviously understanding him perfectly. “As of today, I’ve officially kissed three guys. I don’t know anything. I am making it up as I go. Don’t ask me to explain myself. It was really nice. I hope Ray feels like he isn’t alone in the world, today. I hope he feels like something nice happens to him sometimes.”

When he looked back at Derek, Stiles saw that he was smiling at the road ahead.

 


End file.
